After countless TV projects attempting to tell the life story of Elvis Presley, ranging from good (the Kurt Russell TV movie directed by John Carpenter and the short lived Elvis TV series starring Michael St. Gerard) to the decent (the Sun Records miniseries) to the awful (just about everything else), director Baz Luhrmann gives us the first big budget theatrical movie to depict the story of Elvis. Luhrmann gives us a stylized visual epic, that borrows from superhero movies as well as musicals.
Narrated by Col. Tom Parker on his deathbed, the script streamlines and simplifies Elvis' life in a dizzying pace matched by Luhrmann's fast paced direction. Austin Butler does an excellent job as the title character. Although visually he looks more like John Travolta than Elvis, he does capture Elvis' mannerisms perfectly. Tom Hanks as Col. Tom Parker is another story. Covered in prosthetic make up and sporting a vague Dutch accent, which the real Parker did not have, at least to the outlandish extend Hanks uses it, he turns in a cartoonish performance. Of special note is Olivia DeJonge who plays Priscilla, and nearly steals the show in all of her scenes.
Of course there are some inaccuracies in the movie, such as Elvis performing Trouble about a year and a half too early, and over emphasizing Elvis' love for the blues while seemingly downplaying his love for Country music, and completely ignoring his love for crooners like Bing Crosby and Dean Martin, and the fact by the 1970s his musical tastes in both listening and performing had switched to adult contemporary. Parker was not discovered to be an illegal immigrant until after Elvis died, again making Hanks' choice to use such a hammy accent more questionable. But none of this affects the enjoyment of the film.
Perhaps the bigger flaws are how many things are, understandably due to time constraints, left out or just hinted at in a short-handed way, such as reducing his whole movie career to a 3 minute montage. Or omitting how he worked with producer Chet Atkins in his earliest RCA sessions or really having anything representing Elvis working in the recording studio outside of the iconic first Sun session. Or completely leaving out the Ed Sullivan Show and the infamous "filmed from the waste up", or the fact that Jackie Gleason gave Elvis his first national exposure by booking him on Stage Show, a program Gleason produced and was the lead-in to The Honeymooners. Or that Elvis was a dog lover, and from the mid-50s on, always had at least one dog. Most of the scenes at Graceland or in his Vegas apartment should have had a dog at Elvis' side. But the main focus of this movie is Elvis and the Colonel, so a lot of other aspects go by the wayside. And although it seems to be a Luhrmann trademark, the melding of rap music throughout the film did nothing for me. But overall, this was an excellent and enjoyable film, and I can almost see, had Elvis lived long enough, this is exactly the style of film making he would have endorsed for his own bio-pic.
