Elvis «½
PG-13, 159m. 2022
Cast & Credits: Tom Hanks (Colonel Tom Parker), Austin Butler (Elvis) Olivia DeJonge (Priscilla), Helen Thomson (Gladys), Richard Roxburgh (Vernon), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (B.B. King), David Wenham (Hank Snow), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Jimmie Rodgers Snow), Leon Ford (Tom Diskin), Gary Clark Jr. (Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup), Yola (Sister Rosetta Tharpe), Natasha Bassett (Dixie Locke), Xavier Samuel (Scotty Moore), Adam Dunn (Bill Black), Alton Mason (Little Richard). Shonka Dukereh (Big Mama Thornton). Screenplay by Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner. Directed by Baz Luhrmann.
Midway through director Baz Luhrmann’s lavish spectacle, “Elvis” (2022), chronicling the life of Elvis Presley as played convincingly by Golden Globe winner Austin Butler, is a scene I found to be one of the film’s best moments. The clip had me wishing there had been more of them over the course of the biopic’s 159-minute running time.
The scene happens in 1968 as Elvis is rehearsing the song, “If I Can Dream”, in preparation for his television comeback tour. The shot, which can be seen on YouTube, compares Butler’s performance to the real-life Presley’s 1968 version. The one thing not lost watching those comparisons was how the singer poured his heart and soul into that performance – something he did throughout many concert appearances in his lifetime, even in his final years where he couldn’t remember the lines to some of his songs. Elvis Presley changed a lot physically while he was alive but the one thing that never evaded him was that commanding voice.
The song, “If I Can Dream”, stuck with me long after seeing the film. Even as I write this review that hit, along with “In the Ghetto” and “An American Trilogy” were among the ones I listened to from Elvis: 30 #1 Hits, the 2002 two-disc set released on the 25th anniversary of his death along with 2nd to None released the following year. I am no music aficionado, but I don’t think The Beatles, or the Rolling Stones had more than one or two greatest hits albums and, if they did, they wouldn’t come close to the combined 61 hits Elvis recorded in his lifetime that were listed on those double 25th anniversary releases.
There is no disputing audiences were captivated by Luhrmann’s film though most of the critics said otherwise. “Elvis” the movie was as critic proof as any unnecessary Transformers installment, or the multiple unwanted Marvel movies and television series Disney churns out.
Luhrmann’s “Elvis” was among the less than the half dozen movies released in 2022 I looked forward to seeing on the big screen. I knew given the filmmaker’s directing trademark of turning every picture of his into an event movie from “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)” to the Leonardo DiCaprio/Tobey Maguire collaborative remake of “The Great Gatsby” (2013). that “Elvis” was going to be no different.
The way “Romeo + Juliet” opened in modern day Rio de Janeiro with the Montagues and the Capulets engaging in a shootout at a local gas station with a pulse pounding soundtrack and choir in the background I found to be a throwback to the spaghetti westerns director Sergio Leone churned out back in the 1960s with Clint Eastwood. With “The Great Gatsby” I didn’t want the Jazz Age parties of the 1920s to end.
The director needed to show viewers shots of Elvis madly waving his arms as the instrumental version of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” plays - as though he is trying to either fend off or grab something beyond his reach that only he could see. Then there’s the excited reactions of the crowds, mostly women, as an edgy Tom Parker watches from the back of the auditorium hoping his money ticket will get through the latest concert thanks to the medication doctors injected him with before arriving on stage. This scene, and others, couldn’t be done in four separate takes back and forth.
“I wanted to make a movie for the theater,” Luhrmann told Collider in 2022. “I make theatrical movies. My mission is to make a movie that’s not a franchise movie. All respect to franchise movies, I love my Batman. But I want to make a movie that cross generations, will come in that’s not a franchise and sit in a dark room with strangers and commune in a vast American story, a vast American opera. That’s what I hope this (“Elvis”) will be and that’s what I’m fighting for is to try and bring audiences of all types back into the theater.”
“Elvis” the movie is a visual feast of eye candy as names of the cities the king played in during his rise flash across the screen. While, Parker, the film’s antagonist, envisions the imaginary words “liar”, “cheat” and “conman” splashing up on the neon signs outside Sin City’s The International Hotel as he lays dying of a stroke alone in a Las Vegas hospital. All this thanks to a damning story by news outlets who report on the legendary promoter’s business dealings of fraud based on a new tell-all biography that accuse the showman of sending Elvis Presley to an early grave.
“I am the man who gave the world Elvis Presley,” Parker says to himself as though he is talking to someone on the room. “Without me, there would be no Elvis Presley. And yet, there are some who’d make me out to be the villain of this here story.”
Cast & Credits: Tom Hanks (Colonel Tom Parker), Austin Butler (Elvis) Olivia DeJonge (Priscilla), Helen Thomson (Gladys), Richard Roxburgh (Vernon), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (B.B. King), David Wenham (Hank Snow), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Jimmie Rodgers Snow), Leon Ford (Tom Diskin), Gary Clark Jr. (Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup), Yola (Sister Rosetta Tharpe), Natasha Bassett (Dixie Locke), Xavier Samuel (Scotty Moore), Adam Dunn (Bill Black), Alton Mason (Little Richard). Shonka Dukereh (Big Mama Thornton). Screenplay by Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner. Directed by Baz Luhrmann.
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| 2023 Golden Globes 3 Nominations Best Motion Picture - Drama Best Director - Motion Picture - Baz Luhrmann Winner - Best Performance Austin Butler 2023 Academy Awards 8 Nominations Best Picture Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling Best Sound Best Actor - Austin Butler Best Achievement in Cinematography Best Achievement in Costume Design Best Achievement in Film Editing Best Achievement in Production Design |
The scene happens in 1968 as Elvis is rehearsing the song, “If I Can Dream”, in preparation for his television comeback tour. The shot, which can be seen on YouTube, compares Butler’s performance to the real-life Presley’s 1968 version. The one thing not lost watching those comparisons was how the singer poured his heart and soul into that performance – something he did throughout many concert appearances in his lifetime, even in his final years where he couldn’t remember the lines to some of his songs. Elvis Presley changed a lot physically while he was alive but the one thing that never evaded him was that commanding voice.
The song, “If I Can Dream”, stuck with me long after seeing the film. Even as I write this review that hit, along with “In the Ghetto” and “An American Trilogy” were among the ones I listened to from Elvis: 30 #1 Hits, the 2002 two-disc set released on the 25th anniversary of his death along with 2nd to None released the following year. I am no music aficionado, but I don’t think The Beatles, or the Rolling Stones had more than one or two greatest hits albums and, if they did, they wouldn’t come close to the combined 61 hits Elvis recorded in his lifetime that were listed on those double 25th anniversary releases.
There is no disputing audiences were captivated by Luhrmann’s film though most of the critics said otherwise. “Elvis” the movie was as critic proof as any unnecessary Transformers installment, or the multiple unwanted Marvel movies and television series Disney churns out.
Luhrmann’s “Elvis” was among the less than the half dozen movies released in 2022 I looked forward to seeing on the big screen. I knew given the filmmaker’s directing trademark of turning every picture of his into an event movie from “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)” to the Leonardo DiCaprio/Tobey Maguire collaborative remake of “The Great Gatsby” (2013). that “Elvis” was going to be no different.
The way “Romeo + Juliet” opened in modern day Rio de Janeiro with the Montagues and the Capulets engaging in a shootout at a local gas station with a pulse pounding soundtrack and choir in the background I found to be a throwback to the spaghetti westerns director Sergio Leone churned out back in the 1960s with Clint Eastwood. With “The Great Gatsby” I didn’t want the Jazz Age parties of the 1920s to end.
The trouble with “Elvis” the movie is Luhrmann directs here the way the icon’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, as played by Tom Hanks – with thinning hair, a paunchy stomach, a pointy nose and a southern accent like the real Tom Parker, promoted Elvis’ concerts. The filmmaker isn’t interested in capturing much emotion. He’s only interested in the thrill of the moment. Split screen shots, a filmmaking technique I’ve not seen done since the late 1960s and 70s with “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968) and “Airport” (1970) are incorporated in “Elvis” with good reason.Luhrmann wanted to capture three of four different views of the same concert performances all at once. Just focusing on the beads of sweat on Elvis’ forehead to show how much energy he put into those appearances on one screen wasn’t going to be enough as seen in the film’s opening montage.
The director needed to show viewers shots of Elvis madly waving his arms as the instrumental version of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” plays - as though he is trying to either fend off or grab something beyond his reach that only he could see. Then there’s the excited reactions of the crowds, mostly women, as an edgy Tom Parker watches from the back of the auditorium hoping his money ticket will get through the latest concert thanks to the medication doctors injected him with before arriving on stage. This scene, and others, couldn’t be done in four separate takes back and forth.
“I wanted to make a movie for the theater,” Luhrmann told Collider in 2022. “I make theatrical movies. My mission is to make a movie that’s not a franchise movie. All respect to franchise movies, I love my Batman. But I want to make a movie that cross generations, will come in that’s not a franchise and sit in a dark room with strangers and commune in a vast American story, a vast American opera. That’s what I hope this (“Elvis”) will be and that’s what I’m fighting for is to try and bring audiences of all types back into the theater.”
“Elvis” the movie is a visual feast of eye candy as names of the cities the king played in during his rise flash across the screen. While, Parker, the film’s antagonist, envisions the imaginary words “liar”, “cheat” and “conman” splashing up on the neon signs outside Sin City’s The International Hotel as he lays dying of a stroke alone in a Las Vegas hospital. All this thanks to a damning story by news outlets who report on the legendary promoter’s business dealings of fraud based on a new tell-all biography that accuse the showman of sending Elvis Presley to an early grave.
“I am the man who gave the world Elvis Presley,” Parker says to himself as though he is talking to someone on the room. “Without me, there would be no Elvis Presley. And yet, there are some who’d make me out to be the villain of this here story.”
In a sense without Tom Hanks, there would be no movie about Elvis Presley, or at least not one that got fans attention at the box office and the eight Oscar nominations the film received but won none in 2023.
Like any memorable bad guy, Hanks’ Parker has all the good lines who every time Elvis says it’s time for the two to sever ties, the promoter, like the devil, comes back saying ok, but not without adding implications of what would happen financially if the artist went off on his own.
In one early scene that shows how clever Parker was marketing his money ticket, he has two separate buttons made – one saying, “I hate Elvis” and the other “I love Elvis.”
Parker’s thinking? “I love Elvis,” that’s an easy sell,” he tells Presley’s mother, Gladys. “Those who hate your son will do so whether we profit from it or not.”
On that level who knows what Parker could have achieved had he gone into politics as a campaign manager for candidates like former President Donald Trump in his second run for the presidency. With two “I love/I hate Trump” buttons created by the same campaign; Trump couldn’t lose. The money still goes into the same pocket.
The trouble with “Elvis” the movie is for a screenplay that was meant to make the viewer loathe the antagonist and love the protagonist, Hanks was unable to make me exhibit any hatred for Parker. Hanks can do any role including a bad guy. The question is would he be able to play a bad guy the viewer can grow to hate. Whether he is on screen or in person, Hanks has too nice of a persona to make one want to loathe any character he plays, good or bad.
The only ones watching this film who’d feel any anger towards the promoter, and rightfully so, are those who believe the film’s assertion that Parker’s responsible for sending the performer to an early grave, taking advantage of his talents, and keeping him prisoner at the International under contract to help satisfy the latter’s gambling habits. Yet, it was Elvis who, in his final years, laid out his own path of self-destruction without Parker’s help.I won’t argue Butler’s Golden Globe win in 2023 wasn’t deserved. Like the real singer, Butler put his heart and soul into the lead role to the point watching him was like watching Val Kilmer in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” (1991) as lead singer, Jim Morrison. I didn’t feel like I was watching Kilmer on the screen when I saw that film. I felt like I was watching the real Jim Morrison. The same can be said for Butler who made me feel like this was the real Elvis on screen, especially in the moments before the live 1968 TV special that has him rehearsing the lyrics to “I Can Dream” while a band member plays on a piano. The moment didn’t sound like Butler was lip synching. (Butler sings several of the king’s hits on the soundtrack).
Like Hanks’ performance who failed at making me exhibit any hatred for the guy, I can also say the same about Butler’s Elvis. Like the movie, Elvis the man is all show on the outside but not much on the inside. There’s plenty of “gone-too-soon” biopics I didn’t embrace over the years like “The Doors” but at least they had me either wondering what things would have been like if the artists had lived or kept me hoping their eventual demises wouldn’t happen. Not once watching "Elvis" the movie did I hope the king would avoid his eventual fate at 42 or ask myself, "What would his future in movies had been like if he had starred opposite Barbra Streisand in "A Star Is Born" (1976)?" Luhrmann's "Elvis" might be the first "gone-too-soon" biopic I've seen where I didn't feel a beloved artist like "The King of Rock and Roll" was not a life unfinished.
Though Parker and Elvis get an equal amount of screentime, other characters in the script who played an obvious role in Presley’s life are nothing more than ships passing through the night. Minor characters like Gladys (Helen Thomson) and his father, Vernon (Richard Roxburgh), are only there to progress the film but make no lasting impression.
Equally disappointing is the script’s failure to focus as much on Elvis’ first wife, Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) as the film does on Parker and Elvis. She’s seen here as nothing more than a young attractive talking head; a trophy piece for Elvis to show off in public. The two scenes where Priscilla expresses herself to her soon-to-be ex-husband – one where she says she is leaving him and the other where she urges him to go into rehab (that moment never happened in real life) occur without any much background as to what led to those moments.
“Priscilla was not as involved with Elvis after their divorce as she would now have people believe,” biographer Alanna Nash told Screen Rant, who wrote "The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley." “Elvis would no more have responded to an intervention than a demand to give up singing.”
I learned more about the Priscilla character watching the less than three-minute music video of singer Kacey Musgraves’ version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” which showed clips of Priscilla and Elvis in both good and bad times – scenes of which likely wound up on the cutting room floor.
Perhaps Luhrmann had so much to talk about when editing the king’s all-too-short life that it would have been impossible to cram everything into a less than three-hour movie.
The director admitted to Variety his four-hour cut of the film (which might never happen or be years in the making) is nothing compared to the shortened theatrical cut that included scenes of the icon’s meeting with President Richard Nixon in 1970, Elvis’ relationship with his first girlfriend, Dixie, and his addictions.
“There’s lots of stuff that I shot like the relationship with the band, I had to pare that down – and it’s so interesting how the Colonel gets rid of them,” Luhrmann said. “What happens is he starts doing wackadoo things – like going to see Nixon. I had it in there for a while but there just comes a point where you can’t have everything in, so I just tried to track the spirit of the character.”
This is the content I might have welcomed and maybe even awarded the film a slightly higher rating than the low one I give it. “Elvis” is too much spectacle and not enough substance.
Ask Elvis fans which adaptation of the singer’s life is the better movie and I already know what their answer will be. Forget “Halloween” (1978) director John Carpenter’s 1979’s Emmy nominated made-for-TV film, “Elvis”, that starred Kurt Russell, in the lead role and released two years after the icon’s death, they’ll say. They’ll all say Luhrmann’s is the definitive one. If they had any sensible reasoning, they’d simply tell me both movies are two differing interpretations. I wouldn’t count on that assessment though.Anyone can make a movie about a beloved music icon who went too soon. It’s another if the filmmaker can leave the viewer without the depressing ominous feeling of how that icon’s life ends. I wanted Elvis to be like “Bohemian Rhapsody” (2018) which was a celebration of the life of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, as played by Oscar winner Rami Malek, who succumbed to AIDS in 1991 at 45. That biopic went out with a bang.
Instead of showing the singer’s remaining years dying from the dreaded disease, though, the film ended appropriately with his 1985 Live Aid performance with the band. At one point during the movie’s theatrical release the film’s distributor, 20th Century Studios, showed the picture in selected theaters displaying the lyrics to the band’s hits so viewers could sing along. To my dismay I attended one of those screenings. Thank God, no one sang! “Elvis” the movie, however, could have been that and would have showed how much love and admiration fans had for the performer in doing so.
Compare how “Bohemian Rhapsody” ends and how “Elvis” the movie ends, where two years before his death Elvis tells Priscilla he is all “out of dreams.”
“I’m gonna be 40 soon. 40. And no one’s going to remember me,” Elvis tells her. “I’ve never done anything lasting. Never made a classic film I can be proud of.”
This is not how I wanted to remember the “King of Rock and Roll.”
Instead of being a celebration of the life of a beloved music icon, Luhrmann’s “Elvis”, joins that “gone too soon” list of past biopics (“The Doors” – 1991, “Wired” – 1991, “Judy” – 2019, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” – 2022, and “Back to Black” – 2024) designed to make diehard fans not only saddened but angry that such beloved stars threw their talents away on the evils of addiction and life’s excesses.
I don’t need a depressing two-hour plus biopic to enjoy the music Elvis gave us along with Jim Morrison, Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse as well as the films of Judy Garland and John Belushi to appreciate their talents.
Butler’s Elvis was right about one thing when he talks of his needing to make the most of his fame while he can.
“This could all be over in a flash,” he says.
The only question Luhrmann’s “Elvis” leaves is one I have yet to hear anyone who’s seen this movie more than once give me a justifiably good answer.
Where is the joy in watching a biopic about a rock and roll icon who lived fast, died young and left a good-looking corpse?
©6/19/24
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