What happens when you mix hybrid crime drama-musical with svelte Comeback-era Elvis with post-Dick Van Dyke Show Mary Tyler Moore and a bunch of Catholic nuns? The possibilities would seem to be endless—not to mention a great occasion to come up with a pun-tastic double entendre title. In what would be Elvis Presley’s final official acting role, he accomplishes a personal first: Elvis plays a normal professional person. But he doesn’t just play any old schlub here. He plays Good Samaritan Dr. John Carpenter, whose medical practice is in an unnamed inner-city ghetto and is geared toward helping out poor Latino kids (weirdly Presley does not sing his hit “In the Ghetto,” however).
But here’s where things get really weird: Elvis-as-doctor meets and falls for Mary Gallagher (Mary Tyler Moore) who, unbeknownst to the King, is a nun who’s working undercover with two other clandestine nuns, all of whom were sent to assist the good doctor with his underprivileged patients—albeit in oddly secretive, incognito fashion. Elvis may be playing a doctor here, but obviously, because he’s Elvis, it’s a guitar pickin’, rock-and-roll singing doctor of love as much as anything (yeah, you know the kind).
As you might imagine, the film has very little artistic merit, but still, it’s a bizarrely compelling mélange of characters and themes on the surface and an interesting late 1960s time capsule when even an Elvis film could have some sort of social commentary. Change of Habit makes an awkward nod to the revolutionary political climate of the day with the inclusion of Black Panther characters, drug pushers, corrupt priests, and more. Unfortunately, none of these edgy characters or political themes ever really coalesce in any significant way.
This one’s good for a few camp laughs and Elvis sightings but nobody’s idea of a lost gem, certainly. Optional for classic film collections and Elvis Presley-themed library programming.