OnScreen Review: "Elvis"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
I’ve long wondered if Baz Luhrmann and Michael Bay have ever been seen in a room together. While they make movies of wildly different subject matter, their styles are incredibly similar, an ADHD-style of filmmaking in today’s hyper-active world of short attention spans. Luhrmann’s latest is a biopic of the iconic Elvis Presley. Presley was one of the first musical sensations and went through several iterations of fame before dying at the young age of 42, and have no fear, Baz Luhrmann is here to guarantee that all of it is jammed into this relentlessly paced, amorphous movie.
This biopic uses Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), as the narrator and entry point into the life and times of the King of Rock ‘N Roll. The story is all over the map, with the Colonel in a hospital bed in 1990s Vegas recounting/defending how he managed the career of Elvis, portrayed by Austin Butler, and explaining why he is not to blame for his early demise. The tale jumps from his Vegas hospital bed to all the way back to his early days working the carnival circuit, moving on from there to managing a traveling musical tour, and discovering Elvis as an up-and-coming star, then journeying back into Elvis Presley’s childhood to catch us up on his roots in gospel and R&B, and then launches the audience through the whirlwind that becomes Presley life first as a music star, then as an actor, his musical comeback, and his final years as a Vegas attraction. That was one long run-on sentence from me, just now, but Elvis is itself one giant run-on sentence.
The film clocks in at 2 hours and 38 minutes but it barely has any moments to breathe. The camera swirls and the quick edits are truly Bay-esque. At times it is like journeying through the addled mind of the old Col. Parker, at times it is probably meant to symbolize the hectic lifestyle of being a star and the rapid rise in popularity. Unfortunately, it all feels superficial. Elvis goes from having a hit on the radio that everyone around Parker is talking about to being the biggest thing in the world almost in the blink of an eye. There’s not even a real introduction of Elvis and the Colonel, the Colonel just goes from observing him from afar to all of a sudden Elvis is part of his traveling tour and shooting up the order of attractions toward the top.
There is a serious problem with pace in this movie. And as soon as it is established that Elvis is a musical sensation, it’s onto the next stage. The story is told at an exhausting pace and leaves you feeling bludgeoned by the end of it. There is so much movie here that is it nearly unwieldy. The camera movements, the quick cuts, and breakneck pace made me think of some of the terms used to describe screwball comedies of the 1930s: fast-paced, overlapping, farcical, escapist.
Elvis is such an iconic person that seemingly everybody can do anywhere from a bad-to-passing Elvis impression, usually closer to bad. There have been hordes of Elvis impersonators that have made a living off of the gimmick. Butler, to his credit, doesn’t fall into the bad parody impressions that almost everyone does. He bares little more than a passing resemblance to Elvis, and Luhrmann obscures his facial features in so much makeup that it’s hard to really compare the two (which is probably intentional), but he does have moments where it feels like he is capturing the physicality of The King. These mostly occur when he is performing and in the bigger moments of those performances, like the recording of his television special where he shows up in all leather on a red stage or a sweaty, full-throated close to the opening night of his Vegas act.
Maybe it is that the parody Walk Hard: A Dewy Cox Story ruined the biopic for me, especially ones like this and Bohemian Rhapsody that try to be all-encompassing in their scope, but I really could not get Walk Hard out of my mind when watching this movie. A family tragedy in his background (apparently lost a twin in utero), meaning he has to be doubly great. The first performance we see the women in the audience completely lose their senses, like the world went from black and white to color in a flash like in Pleasantville. The introduction to the temptations of the road, womaning and pills. The trouble with the law leading to his own version of rehab, enlisting in the army. The weight of the 60s and Elvis as a political and social activist, which may have been a thing but also seemed really outsized and embellished. There are also the other musical cameos that appear in the movie, like B.B. King and Elvis running in the same circles and then, oh look over there, there’s Little Richard (Elvis is himself a hilarious cameo in Walk Hard in the form of Jack White). All of these and many more examples follow the biopic playbook to perfection and leave the movie constantly teetering on the line of self-parody and overwrought drama, a total lack of self-awareness and unintentional comedy.
The life and steady demise of The King of Rock ‘N Roll is ripe for a compelling story. Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is not it. It crams in as much story as it possibly can find and implodes in on itself from the sheer weight of it all. Hanks’ Colonel Parker is called a Snowman, due to his roots in the carnival and snow jobs which were deceptions and persuasions of the audience. Elvis is itself a snow job and Luhrmann is the Snowman here. There is very little substance behind the glitz and glamor and pop sheen that Luhrmann puts on this gaudy and ostentatious piece.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars