Elvis

Elvis
Starring Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson
Directed by Baz Luhrmann

When dealing with a musical biopic, you tend to follow the stale generic blueprint: see their childhood years (often marred by tragedy), them growing up to find their voice, getting started in a turbulent musical landscape, hitting it big and becoming a superstar, struggling with the addictions and the downsides of said superstardom, falling from grace, and (sometimes) their meteoric ascent to fame once again. You can only tell this formula so many times before it becomes stale and something you'd be more prone to read in a Wikipedia page than a full-screen epic, but that's where the director's mind comes to life. For Dexter Fletcher, he told the story of Elton John with unique musical numbers and a taste for the flamboyant, which is perfect for the glittery superstar. So when it came to find a director to tell the story of the King of Rock 'n Roll, Baz Luhrmann was an inspired choice. As proven with his previous work "The Great Gatsby," Luhrmann possesses a flair for the dramatic, crafting a visual spectacle that leaves the audience with "oohs" and "aahs" before realizing that he really didn't tell a story at all - kind of like a snowman ploy: rob fools of their money while leaving a smile on their face. While "Elvis" isn't nearly that bad, it's dampened by the parameters of a musical biopic, and goes about an hour too long.

Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) is a charlatan who knows how to rob fools of their money by serving as a manager for country singer Hank Snow (David Wenham), but when he hears of a white man who can blend country music with Black-inspired gospel and blues, he takes notice of the young Elvis Presley (Austin Butler). After witnessing his gyrating show that sent all the women in the audience into a frenzy, he drops Snow and convinces Elvis to take executive control of his career, sending Elvis into the stratosphere. Hit after hit and show after show, Elvis's popularity grows due to his ability to sing and also doing it his own way - in a world faced with segregation, Elvis is hunted by politicians who claim his music corrupts children and further stokes the fires of racism, trying to force him to tone down his gyrations. While he agrees to at first, he comes to terms that there's a lot of people who are making money off of him, and he sets out to do it his way, to the chagrin of Parker, but who also proves Elvis's point by not dropping him because he's still a financial cash cow.

Forced to enter the War, Presley meets and falls in love with Priscilla Wagner (Olivia DeJonge), and the two get married and give birth to their daughter Lisa Marie. Wanting to spread his musical wings and travel overseas, Elvis comes into conflict with Parker, who's been using Elvis's money to fuel his own gambling problems, resulting in the two coming to blows and Elvis's slow descent into drugs and alcohol, resulting in his untimely death.

"Elvis" is a dazzling spectacle of nothingness, a visual vomiting of lights, colors, camera movements, and sounds that culminate in little to nothing for its final outcome, a film that's only saving grace is the emergence of its lead actor, Austin Butler, in his first major leading role. Very few actors can wholly disappear into a performance, and Butler is one of them. He fully immerses himself into the Elvis motif where he not only takes on the King's mannerisms, but voice and vocal performances as well, singing all the songs himself. Without Butler, this would've been a complete disaster, but even with him, it's a struggle to dredge through the 159 minutes (that's 2 hours, 39 minutes, only 23 minutes less than "Avengers: Engame"). I found myself wiggling in my seat more often than not, resting my head on my hand, struggling to stay awake through it all, because despite it's severely long runtime, it doesn't really tell any story in the process.

Without a doubt the best part of the film is the first thirty minutes or so, when we see how Elvis gained his unnatural singing talent by blending his country roots with his love of Black gospel and blues from his time spent on Beale Street, and it's this part that tells the most story. We see how he interacted with fellow singers of his time including B.B. King and Big Momma Thornton, but due to the framing device the movie gives, we get little to not real story with those who led to Elvis's unique style.

This framing device centers around Colonel Tom Parker (which, as it turns out, isn't his real name), who is telling his "deathbed confessional" about working with Elvis, and therefore anything not making him seem like the hero is disregarded. He wasn't fond of African Americans, so their roles are minimized. He didn't care for Elvis's wife Priscilla - thinking she'd convince him to leave him and be a stay-at-home dad - and so her story is relegated to the stereotypical longsuffering wife in the background. In a sense, this is a brilliant tactic by Luhrmann and his fellow writers, because one thing musical biopics are repeatedly bashed for is the fact that they're not really telling the whole story, and here they don't have to - it's Tom Parker's story about Elvis, not Elvis's story about Elvis. It's also a chance to gloss over or completely ignore the negatives (such as the fact that Priscilla was only 14 when she began a relationship with Elvis), giving a film that's more a movie than a biopic, but never reaching its full potential.

Elvis's story is relegated to his performances, which were impressive and played to Luhrmann's strengths as a showman in his own right, but it detracts from the real Elvis that the movie was supposed to tell. He goes from year to year with performing at different venues, and every so often we see into his mind to see what makes him tick - his love for the African American community, his push against capitalism (despite Parker pushing him toward it), his love for his family (especially his mother), and his constant butting heads with executives, politicians, and anyone else who wanted him to conform and be more "family friendly." Apart from those fleeting moments, it's your traditional biopic flair, following the same tired formula, not really giving any deeper meaning than the flatline base.

Austin Butler has been in the business since a child, appearing in the television series "Zoey 101" and "Ruby & the Rockits," while playing minor roles in major films like "The Dead Don't Die" and "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood," but "Elvis" is his breakout performance in every sense of the word. He studied Elvis so thoroughly that he fully embodied the man in every sense of the word, completely disappearing in the role. He commanded the screen and was too good for a film like this, and honestly should get some award recognition despite the mediocre project he was working on. He spent a long time perfecting the King's speech, and even performed all the songs himself instead of relying on a track, and his commitment to the film should be applauded.

Likewise, but in a very lesser level, Tom Hanks also shined as Colonel Tom Parker, but that's just because it's Tom Hanks and he can do no wrong. Despite his long resume, he's hardly ever played the villain, and here he really does. Colonel Tom Parker was a complete charlatan and thief who suckered Elvis out of half of his earnings and kept him almost as his personal prisoner, constantly threatening (by not threatening) his livelihood. Yet even Hanks is saddled by terrible prosthetics that didn't allow for his natural facial expressions to shine through, and his accent was shoddy at best, oftentimes reverting to Hanks's own accent that deviated from his performance, turning him more into a caricature of a villain than the real villain he was.  

Despite Luhrmann's taste for the dramatic, "Elvis" is extremely bogged down by its musical biopic parameters, glossing over years of the King's life in minutes. While it does showcase Elvis's unique musical styling and performances, they're bogged down by the pomp and circumstance Luhrmann uses to portray them. While it does offer a brilliant standout performance by Austin Butler, the exaggerated runtime is more a painful marathon than an enjoyable jog, and ultimately the film can be summed up this way: it was a film when a Wikipedia read could've sufficed.

The Score: B+