Movie Review: Elvis

Watched Elvis recently, and it was okay. I think the movie was way too long. It felt like a blur of over-extended snapshots of his beginning, his rise, and leading to his inevitable downfall. They felt like more comic book panels than a movie, where you are shown two pictures and your imagination is to fill in the gaps between those pictures. No period of his life was given enough focus to really flesh out the nuances of the different Elvises we see throughout the movie, and I think the director did this in order to give us an extremely rose-tinted view of Elvis. It was blatant to me by how much the Colonel is blamed for all the bad things that happened in Elvis’ life, and hence making Elvis out into some defenseless victim.

Elvis womanizing and subsequent adultery, his drug addiction, his extravagant spending is all blamed on the Colonel’s machinations. Even his wife Priscilla said she is not worried about the girls he slept with but with the drugs he abused. Is this how the real-life Priscilla felt? Would any woman be okay with it, not considering the STDs his husband would contract and give her in return?

The movie touches Elvis with extremely gentle hands, like he was a toddler in need of coddling and the story tries to portray it in likewise fashion. However, it comes as disingenuous (I wonder if Elvis’ family were heavily involved in the direction of the film).

Austin Butler gives his best as Elvis Presley, but even then I felt he was but playing a Greaser stereotype. The camera seems to pull away, the story seems to jump before Butler can give any soul to the man. Tom Hanks as the crafty, greedy Colonel Tom Parker shines. I could not see Tom Hanks at all. He really killed the role.

The editing and transition style were colorful and dramatic like the movie portrays Elvis’ life. There is a charm to it, but I felt quite a lot of it is misused when the story being told had quite a downer undertone to it.

For being a film about a music star, the movie never plays out any of his performance in full except the one he gave at the Las Vegas hotel. Either it was copyright issues or they felt that today’s audience wouldn’t enjoy them, who knows?

If you are a fan of Elvis, then you should go watch it. If not, I would recommend it only if you have not much else to do.

P.S.: Did Elvis’ mother really okay with the way he danced and said it was God-given? They portray her as religious woman but no one is that blind to see that Elvis was giving a sexual performance and also she used the Lord’s name in vain? These felt really jarring. I could not believe her.