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Cannes review: Electrifying Elvis delivers the icon like never before

Director Baz Luhrmann recaptures his Moulin Rouge! mojo with a hip-swiveling profile loaded with risk and reward.

Senior Editor, Movies

Can it be that we really don't know Elvis anymore — not as the seismic force that shook people and remade the popscape? Barring those who actually lived through it (a group to be envied), that's almost certainly the case. Baz Luhrmann 's Elvis , a dazzling, splatter-paint evocation of the myth and the man, does a mighty job of bringing us closer to what that revolutionary moment must have felt like. It may not be slavishly devoted to the facts (this isn't your typical birth-to-deather), but as with Todd Haynes 's glam fantasia Velvet Goldmine , the movie achieves something trickier and more valuable, mining shocking intimacy from sweeping cultural changes.

Luhrmann, an inspired stylist who somehow managed to freshen up The Great Gatsby , doesn't make us wait long for the first of these jolts. Before unleashing a glimpse of his Presley, we hear the voice emanating off a percolating debut single, "That's All Right," then we follow a shadowy figure taking the stage at a 1954 concert, the emphasis on mystery and discovery. By the time Austin Butler stares down the lens and melts it (his revelatory performance, fully lived-in and vulnerable, never plays like imitation), Luhrmann has hooked us by the strangeness of it all: the slicked hair, the androgynous makeup, the girls in the audience uncontrollably leaping to their feet.

Already we've seen Elvis' snoozy country-music competition ( Kodi Smit-McPhee plays one of these casualties, almost a fan-fictional variation on his gangly creation from The Power of the Dog ), and there's no contest. "It was the greatest carnival attraction I'd ever seen," murmurs narrating uber-manager-to-be Colonel Tom Parker (a stunty, half-successful Tom Hanks ), and a thesis snaps into place, one that Luhrmann, himself an impresario, develops in a screenplay credited to him and three other contributing writers: This is story about salesmanship, onstage and off.

Elvis crystallizes as a media-minded showdown between Parker's product manager — he convinces the naïve Presley to commit exclusively on a Ferris wheel, if the circus metaphor wasn't clear enough — and an increasingly willful and visionary artist. Luhrmann's filmmaking style follows suit, beginning in a flurry of look-at-me zip pans and crotch zooms, Presley making his meteoric way up the marquee posters, then deepening into intense fourth-wall piercings as Butler's Elvis thirsts for authenticity. (The director's ear for jolting modern musical juxtapositions remains in full flower, with new contributions by Doja Cat , Shonka Dukureh and Gary Clark Jr. , among others; Presley's own classics are creatively remixed, covered, and sometimes even modulated into minor keys.)

Not a perfect lookalike (and that's fine), Butler does extremely well by the music and stage moves, but he's even more compelling during Presley's post-Army Hollywood years, presented as dissatisfied ones. Elvis has an extended centerpiece that you can't quite believe arrives in a major studio movie: a behind-the-scenes exfoliation of Presley's landmark 1968 TV comeback special, during which Parker's dreams of wholesome Christmas entertainment collide with an increasingly politicized singer, shaken by the recent assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ("He's not even wearing the sweater!" a panicky executive barks in the control room, confronted by Butler's leather-clad, gospel-belting Presley.)

As fun as Elvis often is, it scores some remarkably sharp points, particularly regarding Presley's unfaked love of Black musicians, and the appropriations that fueled his crossover success. Of the many biopics to enshrine the King (and Elvis eclipses them all), none has featured a triple split-screen montage charting the performance of a single song back to its blues-shack roots. (Even the serious Presley documentaries don't cement the point as clearly as Luhrmann does.) "Too many people are making too much money to put you in jail," a shrewd B.B. King ( Waves ' Kelvin Harrison Jr.) tells Presley at one of his low points; the line is scalding.

For a filmmaker sometimes criticized for skimming the surface, Luhrmann uses the material to go as deep as he does wide. Sometimes Elvis feels like a lost Oliver Stone film from his daring 1990s heyday: a big-canvas exploration of debauched American appetites. Fittingly, the Las Vegas years slacken a bit, televisions getting bulleted and pills chased. Still, Luhrmann makes room for Nixonian paranoia, especially in one hushed conversation with estranged wife Priscilla ( Olivia DeJonge ). "I never made a classic film I could be proud of," Elvis, a James Dean fan, tells her. Fans of Blue Hawaii will wince, but something equally rare has come to pass — a portrait of a serious man trapped in an unserious life. Grade: A–

‘Elvis’ Review: Shocking the King Back to Life

Austin Butler plays the singer, with Tom Hanks as his devilish manager, in Baz Luhrmann’s operatic, chaotic anti-biopic.

By A.O. Scott

My first and strongest memory of Elvis Presley is of his death. He was only 42 but he already seemed, in 1977, to belong to a much older world. In the 45 years since, his celebrity has become almost entirely necrological. Graceland is a pilgrimage spot and a mausoleum.

Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” — a biopic in the sense that “Heartbreak Hotel” is a Yelp review — works mightily to dispel this funerary gloom. Luhrmann, whose relationship to the past has always been irreverent and anti-nostalgic, wants to shock Elvis back to life, to imagine who he was in his own time and what he might mean in ours.

The soundtrack shakes up the expected playlist with jolts of hip-hop (extended into a suite over the final credits), slivers of techno and slatherings of synthetic film-score schmaltz. (The composer and executive music producer is Elliott Wheeler.) The sonic message — and the film’s strongest argument for its subject’s relevance — is that Presley’s blend of blues, gospel, pop and country continues to mutate and pollinate in the musical present. There’s still a whole lot of shaking going on.

As a movie, though, “Elvis” lurches and wobbles, caught in a trap only partly of its own devising. Its rendering of a quintessentially American tale of race, sex, religion and money teeters between glib revisionism and zombie mythology, unsure if it wants to be a lavish pop fable or a tragic melodrama.

The ghoulish, garish production design, by Catherine Martin (Luhrmann’s wife and longtime creative partner) and Karen Murphy, is full of carnival sleaze and Vegas vulgarity. All that satin and rhinestone, filtered through Mandy Walker’s pulpy, red-dominated cinematography, conjures an atmosphere of lurid, frenzied eroticism. You might mistake this for a vampire movie.

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Elvis review: Baz Luhrmann’s ridiculous, sublime biopic

The first time we get a good look at the title character of Baz Luhrmann’s caffeinated Wikipedia spectacular, Elvis , he’s stepping out of the shadows and onto a stage in Louisiana, ready to perform for a crowd totally unaware that they’re about to witness the coronation of the future king of rock ’n’ roll. Decked out in pink from shoulders to ankles, the 19-year-old heartthrob hesitates, and the audience, smelling blood, heckles him. But then Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) launches into the opening notes of what will become his first national hit, Baby, Let’s Play House , and as he belts and strums, his body lurches and thrusts. He moves as if struck by lightning, and the electric current passes through the whole venue, jolting awake the young women in attendance, their libidos instantly sparked by his suggestive country-preacher gyrations.

Too many biopics to count include a star-is-born moment like this one. But Luhrmann, the irrepressible carnival-barker glutton behind Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby , stages the sequence with a hellzapoppin’ flair that pushes it past cliché, on to parody, and then beyond that still, to a fever pitch of cartoon hysteria. A thunderbolt of electric guitar embellishes the song, sacrificing historical realism on the altar of cross-era, arena-rock glory. And the girls don’t just scream. They explode into a kind of involuntary rapture, as if possessed by the spirit of Presley’s raw animal magnetism. Supercharging a stock music-drama convention, Luhrmann reaches for the heights of myth: The rise of a radio god as a one-man sexual revolution, releasing all the pent-up frustration of America’s youth and halving history in the process.

That kind of energy dominates Elvis . On paper, the movie is pure biographical boilerplate, connecting 25 years of bullet points in the life and career of the bestselling solo recording artist of all time. Yet Luhrmann is no accountant or hall-of-fame historian. Right from the start, he cuts the music biopic into a mad flurry, caricaturing its familiar beats, tackling its obligations through a scrapbook collage of headlines and crowd shots and split-screen action. Elvis is structured like a nearly three-hour sizzle reel. It doesn’t so much have scenes as suites. It moves .

Luhrmann’s MTV overdrive approach might be as strategic as it is pathological. Elvis can only cover all the ground it needs to cover at warp speed, telling elements of its decades-spanning true story through implication and shorthand. The rise to fame. The battle against scandalized moral scolds. The subsequent backlash to the compromised, pastor-friendly Elvis, which is basically the singer’s Dylan-goes-electric moment in reverse. Elvis races through all of it. Meanwhile, the King’s career in Hollywood is relegated to a single, stylish Technicolor montage. His service overseas is omitted entirely.

Watch Austin Butler transform into Elvis in new behind-the-scenes video
Austin Butler brings back the King in first Elvis trailer

To the extent that this maximalist Graceland revue has a dramatic center, it’s the initially symbiotic, increasingly parasitic relationship between Elvis and his infamously exploitative manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). The script, an obvious patchwork of drafts by Luhrmann and others, starts the story with Parker catching scent of the superstar at an embryonic stage. (His discovery that the million-dollar voice on the radio belongs to a white man is accompanied by a hilarious smash zoom into Hanks’s face, disguised by a fake nose and animated with shock and the lust of opportunity). Parker ends up seducing Elvis into a contract at the fairgrounds, issuing his Faustian pitch at the top of a Ferris wheel. Among other things, this is an innocence lost story: One montage of many crosscuts Elvis losing his virginity with shots of his mother fretting.

What Parker calculated was the immense commercial potential in Presley’s culture vulturing, the way he repackaged for a white audience the sound and moves of the Black artists he listened to in his youth. Elvis naturally foregrounds that aspect of the musician’s rags-to-riches story, even folding it into the Walk Hard tropes it energizes: As the King struts to the stage, Luhrmann cuts to footage of a preteen Presley spying on a barnyard performance by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup , a truer contender for the title of rock ‘n’ roll’s father. Later, a thrillingly assembled sequence depicts Elvis literally walking between white and Black America, at home on the lawn of a plantation and on Beale Street. The film grasps the true threat conservatives saw in Elvis — their fear of not just his exaggerated sexuality but also of the Black culture on which he was lucratively capitalizing.

Parker narrates the film, repeatedly insisting that Elvis’s eventual decline and death were a product of his tireless devotion to putting on a show, even as what we see puts the blame more squarely on the conniving, controlling guidance of his manager. That’s a potentially ingenious angle, to frame the story around the unreliable deflections of its villain. Hanks, though, is unusually, almost impressively atrocious in the role. The casting makes sense in theory, weaponizing the essential paternal decency of our most trustworthy Hollywood star into a manipulation tactic. But even a movie this outrageously heightened can’t support the fat-suit absurdity of Hanks’s performance, which compounds ghoulish Austin Powers makeup with a truly bizarre, vaudeville Nordic accent that sounds almost nothing like how the real man really talked. Hanks is simply too ridiculous to take seriously here, and his scenes tilt the film precariously close to sketch comedy.

Butler, sweating profusely though a rotating wardrobe of famously fashionable getups, fares better as The King. It’s a print-the-legend performance, all swagger and pinup-boy posturing, with much more attitude — and sex appeal — than psychology. But that suits a biopic with a greater interest in the seismic legend of Elvis than who he really was under all the supernova charisma and sequined white jumpsuits. That Butler sometimes resembles not so much Elvis as any number of flash-in-the-pan acts indebted to the artist’s style only reinforces Luhrmann’s implied conception of rock history as a game of telephone, distorting the original voice with each new delivery or generation.

Elvis is everywhere, the film asserts — an idea it communicates through a soundtrack that slows down and airs out big hits like “Fools Rush In,” remixing them into a series of ghostly hymns echoing out of the pop-culture consciousness. The director of Moulin Rouge has also, of course, stocked his jukebox with anachronistic needle drops, alternating hip-hop with modern covers of The King to underscore how Elvis’s original act of appropriation is just one chapter in the twisting path of American popular music. It’s a more successfully drawn connection than the film’s numerous attempts to place Elvis against the tumultuous background of mid-century breaking news. Perhaps Hanks is really around to fortify the Forrest Gump associations of a script that periodically drifts to a television set and the assassinations reported on it.

After two-plus hours of relentless supercut summary, the film slows and runs out of steam. An essential component of the Elvis story is the downfall portion of it — those final ignoble years in Vegas, when the man ran out of comebacks, got hooked on pills, and became a prisoner to his casino residency and the vice grip Parker had on his pocketbook. It’s where the plot has to go, but in dutifully dramatizing the last act of this life, Luhrmann sucks all of the wild-man enthusiasm out of his material. The final act is a laborious slump into a tragically foregone conclusion, capped by obligatory archival footage.

Where it comes alive, before that, is on stage. Here, Butler’s sultry costume-party approximation of a luminary gels with Luhrmann’s cut-a-second restlessness to produce something like a monument to the mythology of Elvis. The movie gets by, for so much of its bloated running time, on the ecstatic, foolhardy reverie of its showmanship — the way it channels the King’s stomping stage presence through a breathless rush of image and sound, trying to whip the audience into the same frenzy that Elvis inspired in his own life. How, Luhrmann wagers, can we measure the life of this monumental, destabilizing figure through anything less than a head-spinning extravaganza? Here and there, the excess of his vision pays off, shifting from exhausting to exhilarating.

Elvis opens in theaters everywhere Friday, June 24 . For more reviews and writing by A.A. Dowd, visit his Authory page .

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In ‘Elvis,’ Baz Luhrmann brilliantly floods our senses with arresting sights and sounds

The director’s trademark razzle-dazzle surrounds tom hanks as an oily colonel tom parker and austin butler, electrifying as the king..

“Elvis” star Austin Butler plays the singer in every stage of his career, starting with the hip-swiveling rocker who made the girls swoon.

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The numbers vary from Internet source to Internet source, but the general consensus seems to be there were something like 200 Elvis Presley impersonators in the world at the time of the King’s death in 1977 and the number has grown to at least 35,000 today. And we’re not even including all the actors who have portrayed Elvis on TV and in the movies, from Kurt Russell to Jonathan Rhys Meyers to David Keith to Don Johnson to Harvey Keitel to Michael Shannon to Val Kilmer as the Elvis apparition who advises Christian Slater’s Clarence in “True Romance.”

So one can’t help but ask: With every chapter of the man’s life and times already so deeply etched into the pop culture landscape, do we really need another movie about the man and the myth and the legend that was Elvis Presley?

In the case of “Elvis,” the answer is a resounding YES, thanks to the gloriously excessive, razzle-dazzle direction of Baz Luhrmann (“Romeo + Juliet,” “Moulin Rouge!”), a smoldering star turn performance from Austin Butler as the title character and a sure-to-be-polarizing but fantastically eccentric spin on Colonel Tom Parker, courtesy of a nearly unrecognizable Tom Hanks. This is 2 hours and 39 minutes of screen-popping, candy-colored, highly stylized, fever-dream showmanship that serves as a Greatest Hits compilation touching on the many, many permutations of Elvis, from malleable country bumpkin to sex symbol icon to B-movie star to seemingly irrelevant near has-been to the Comeback King to Las Vegas icon to his death at the age of 42, and it’s such a sprawling, amazing rollercoaster ride that it’s difficult to process the fact Presley has been dead longer than he was with us.

If you thought the magnificently flamboyant Luhrmann was well-suited to put the flashiest of spins on “The Great Gatsby,” you can imagine what he does with the made-for-overkill mythology of Elvis — and from the moment we see a bejeweled version of the Warner Bros. Pictures logo, we know Luhrmann is going to flood our senses with a nonstop medley of arresting sights and sounds, never taking his foot off the directorial gas pedal. (Who wants to see a version of Elvis unplugged, am I right?)

“Elvis” is told through the skewed, self-serving, huckster’s perspective of Colonel Tom Parker, who was not a colonel and was born Andreas Cornelis van Kujik in the Netherlands (hence the strange Dutch/Southern hybrid accent), an admittedly great showman and promoter who latched onto Presley early on and rode his show pony into the ground, allegedly bilking Presley of millions and maneuvering him into making all sorts of deals that benefitted Parker first and Presley a distant second. Parker keeps trying to convince us he’s not the villain in the story, as he we see him always lurking backstage, always making side deals to line his pockets or cover his gambling debts, always in the middle of everything while looking out for himself first, always spinning things with his almost cartoonishly evil cadence.

Tom Hanks is nearly unrecognizable as Elvis’ wheeler-dealer of a manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

Luhrmann employs a sparkling array of visual and aural tactics, from period-piece graphics to sepia-toned flashbacks, from nostalgic color schemes to swooping camera movements to split screens and cool and creative match-cut transitions. We know Elvis didn’t write his own material and we know he appropriated the sounds of gospel and blues from Black artists, and perhaps more than any previous Presley biopic, “Elvis” continually acknowledges that, with the likes of BB King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Little Richard (Alton Mason), Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) and Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola Quartey) getting their moments.

Still, the film’s fate rests on the shoulders of Austin Butler, who flashed serious movie-star potential as the evil fool Tex Watson in Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and is mesmerizingly strong here. Butler doesn’t do an Elvis impersonation, but he does a stunningly good job of capturing the hip-swiveling, pink-suited Elvis who makes girls swoon and scream in a comedically effective early sequence; the ’60s Elvis who starred in a series of forgettable and dopey movies; the brilliant performer who made one of the most memorable pop-star comebacks of all time in a 1968 TV special, and the lost and borderline self-parodying Karate King who sweated and toiled on the Vegas stage and only occasionally touched greatness. Butler is an electric performer who shines in the spotlight when Elvis is onstage, but he also infuses Presley with an empathetic humanity and vulnerability. We know the man was hardly a saint, but we understand his sins.

Hanks’ characterization of Colonel Tom Parker is a big swing for someone who has held the unofficial title of America’s Most Likable Movie Star for more than 30 years. Some might argue he’s miscast, but I found the performance to be suitably oily, for despite Parker’s protestations, he IS the villain of the story. Even as Parker constantly reminds us that he “made” Elvis Presley (and there’s an element of truth to that), we see that time and again, he also contributed to the destruction of the man.

Still, for all its tragic elements and the heartbreak of an ending we know is coming, “Elvis” is a brilliant celebration of an artist who left a lasting and huge footprint on our culture.

Elvis (2022) Review

24 Jun 2022

Elvis (2022)

It’s been close to a decade since Baz Luhrmann ’s last movie. Any question that time may have mellowed him is answered within the first few minutes of Elvis ; even by Luhrmann’s usual standards, the first act of this biopic is frantic with filmmaking acrobatics. Rat-a-tat editing. Dream sequences. Animated sequences. Loop-di-loop camera moves. Incongruous modern soundtrack. He immediately puts his foot down and goes racing through the life of Elvis Presley. It’s one hell of a ride, but sometimes it’s moving too fast for his audience to get more than a passing look at his characters.

Luhrmann’s ambitions are laudably grand. He follows Presley’s ( Austin Butler ) life from his teens, when he’s discovered playing alongside tired country music acts, to his final days as a bloated drug addict, so exhausted he can’t even hold his own microphone. That’s not where Luhrmann stops. He also tells the story of Colonel Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ), Presley’s manager, who is depicted as a scheming villain who never misses an opportunity for a buck and puts money before Presley’s happiness. And further aims to show how America changed during Presley’s career, from the ’50s to the ’70s, especially for Black people, who Presley both supports and exploits, casually pinching influences from Black artists. Trying to squeeze in so much, even over a 159-minute running time, it’s not surprising that much of it feels rushed.

Luhrmann’s ‘more is not nearly enough’ style is at its most effective when he’s dealing in broad, simple emotions. In Moulin Rouge! or Romeo + Juliet , tales of desperate love at first sight, his explosive rhythms and romantic excess amplify all the primal yearning. It’s when he has to pause to contemplate subtler feelings that his confidence seems to desert him. His Great Gatsby was a dud because he showed little care for anyone’s interior lives. He was just there for the party. Elvis is no dud, but it again exposes Luhrmann’s disinterest in digging below the surface.

Presley’s story is told on a soap-operatic scale, towering highs or miserable lows, and little between. The relationship between Parker and Presley feels underexplored, with the otherwise smart Presley just in dumb thrall to a man clearly manipulating him. In scenes about Presley taking songs from the mouths of Black artists, Luhrmann doesn’t give a single Black character a significant voice, a surely unintended irony.

Austin Butler is sensational as Presley. He convinces at every age, from teen to 42.

Where Luhrmann absolutely excels, making some of the best work of his career, is in showing the addictive but destructive romance between Presley and his live audience. The performance sequences are a triumph. In Presley’s first live show we see how lust spreads through the crowd like a virus, girls screaming back at him in a way he doesn’t quite understand but loves. Both become hooked. As the film, and Presley’s career, go on, the audience grows into an insatiable animal, devouring more and more of Presley’s energy as he itches for another hit of adoration, prepared to surrender everything for it. There’s a manic, sexy, almost dangerous vigour to these scenes, which tell us more about Presley’s inner self than the rest of the film.

Austin Butler is sensational as Presley. It’s a huge ask for an actor to disappear into a man so well known that everyone and his uncle does a bad impression of him. Butler convinces at every age, from teen to 42. He’s not a particularly close visual match for Presley but he’s mastered vocal inflections and imperceptible details in Presley’s moves on stage that mean he captures his presence. More importantly, he gives a sense of a person, with normal insecurities, beneath the public image. Even if Luhrmann shies away from finding out who that normal person is, Butler suggests he’s there. Hanks’ Parker is written cartoonishly and he plays it appropriately. It’s not realistic but it’s entertaining.

Nobody comes to a Luhrmann film hoping for something under the top. His Elvis has all the dazzle and bombast you could ask, but it presents a portrait of an icon — not of a flesh-and-blood man.

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Elvis (2022) Movie Review – Elvis may have left the building, but Baz Luhrmann brings him back for the ultimate encore performance

Elvis may have left the building, but Baz Luhrmann brings him back for the ultimate encore performance

Like The King himself, Elvis (2022) is a dazzling, daring, delightfully over the top slice of rock’n’roll history. But like Elvis, the blistering source material is ultimately mismanaged and overstays its welcome with a flabby denouement that – almost – overshadows its early brilliance.

Quintessentially Baz Luhrmann- more Moulin Rouge than straight rock biopic a la Bohemian Rhapsody – the almost three-hour long film takes audiences on a greatest hits tour through the life of Elvis Aaron Presley, whose humble upbringing in a poor, mostly black neighbourhood sowed the seeds of music superstardom.

Though an undoubted talent in his own right, Presley was famed for appropriating the Black music and culture he experienced growing up on Memphis’s Beale Street for a mainstream audience in segregation-era America- “A white boy with Black moves,” as it’s put.

For young Elvis, it was the sound and style he grew up with; the sound and style of music that made him happy. But producers saw nothing but dollar signs with each strut of leather-clad hips. And that’s where our story gets messy.

Using the performer’s signature dance move as a symbol of cultural divide and social change, entire montages are dedicated to the “Elvis the Pelvis” (a real-life nickname bestowed by outraged press of the time) phenomenon. Still somehow provocative even by today’s standards, the camera lingers on star Austin Butler’s (playing Elvis) every twitch and twist as he violently thrusts his groin towards the hordes of screaming female fans below the stage. It’s hardly subtle. But who expects subtlety from a Baz Luhrmann movie? Or for that matter, an Elvis show?

The danger with both is in the fine line between spectacular and tacky- a line which Elvis unfortunately crosses several times. In an unusual move, the film is told through the narration of Elvis’s long-time manager Colonel Tom Parker as he lies on his deathbed in a Las Vegas hospital.

Played by legendary nice guy Tom Hanks doing his best impression of a Hollywood sleazeball meets crooked carny through layers of prosthetics and a truly baffling accent, Parker is portrayed as cartoonishly evil which undercuts the story’s tension and nuance.

Literally rubbing his hands together with glee as he signs away Elvis’s future to the merchandising overlords, the character is as cliched and one dimensional as they come despite being based on a real person.

Happily, the same can’t be said for Elvis himself. Sure, Elvis is not quite a comprehensive character study (the editing is too choppy and fast-paced for real emotional depth). But a perfectly cast Austin Butler manages to capture the spirit and genuineness of Elvis Presley, the man and the showman, without straying into caricature. His Elvis has the sideburns, the gravel voice, and the trademark quiff. But he also has heart.

The film similarly steers away from late era “fat Elvis” clichés and is respectful of its subject without being overly reverent. Yes, there is a scene in which Elvis shoots his television. But thankfully Luhrmann spares us from fat-suited up, giant sandwich eating montages- or worse, a Romeo + Juliet style dramatic death scene on the toilet.

At the height of his career, Elvis Presley achieved almost superhuman levels of success and adoration. Yet at his core he still dreamed of more. And while desire to keep going- to sell more, earn more, be more, for his family and for his fans- was his personal and professional downfall (it’s hard to grow creatively when you’re barricaded inside a Las Vegas penthouse between gigs), it came from a place of joy.

This visually spectacular, inventively crafted old school Hollywood fable doesn’t know quite when to quit either. But in its own imperfect fashion, it rediscovers the joy of Elvis.

Feel free to check out more of our movie reviews here!

Verdict - 8/10 8/10

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Is the ‘elvis’ biopic a home run or complete miss here’s what critics are saying.

Arguably one of the most highly anticipated films to be released this year, the Elvis biopic has been making headlines long before the release of the film.

As per the film’s official trailer, Elvis s tars Screen Actors Guild nominee Austin Butler, as Elvis Presley, and Oscar winner Tom Hanks , as his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and tells the story of the complicated relationship Presley had with his manager.

The film is told from Parker’s point of view across two decades and offers the audience a look at his rise to fame against the shifting cultural landscape in America.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly Australian director Baz Luhrmann claimed that working on Elvis was one the most surreal experiences in his whole career.

And it appears Luhrmann’s hard work had paid off, as the biopic is facing a $30 million box office debut, battling Tom Cruises Top Gun: Maverick for the number one spot- if successful Elvis will become the best non-franchise debut film of the pandemic era.

But it’s not just regular movie goers who are in awe of the new film, Aussie Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman called it “incredible”, even tweeting a special shout-out on Twitter to Hanks and Butler for bringing the legend back in full colour.

The amazing duo of @bazluhrmann and #CatherineMartin have done it again! What a film! Congrats to @austinbutler and @tomhanks on awesome performances. Go see @ElvisMovie @Deborra_lee pic.twitter.com/JioeGJw1fG — Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) June 28, 2022

Observer film critic, Mark Kermode, gave the film a whopping five-star rating saying the “blistering pop biopic combines the kinetic musical madness of Moulin Rouge! with the turbo-charged irreverence of The Great Gatsby , the Shakespearian tragedy of Romeo+Juliet and the “what- all -of-it!?” ambition of Australia .”

Kermode praised Butler’s portrayal of Elvis saying that of all the actors who have previously tried to embody the “lightning-like magic” that is Elvis, “none has come close to the physical, emotional, electrical energy” than Butler.

According to Kermode, the film’s mixture of vocals and portrayal of the changing face of racial America is the “cherry on the cake of a film that knows its subject but isn’t afraid to play fast and loose with a familiar tune”.

Culture Vultures’ Maxence Vincent admitted he didn’t think he would enjoy the film as much as he did, saying “Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis shouldn’t have worked, but from the minute it starts and Luhrmann’s signature Bazmark logo appears on the screen, while a remixed version of ‘Suspicious Minds’ plays in the background, you know you’re about to watch something special.”

“What makes Elvis stand out amongst the sea of formulaic biopics is how Luhrmann pulls us in through his exuberant, and maximalist style. He pulls no punches in blowing you away from the film’s spellbinding opening sequence with a barrage of camera tricks, split screens, overlays, multiple fades to blacks — you name it, it’s all there,” he said.

Vincent did admit though that those looking for a factual representation of the King of Rock’s life will be “severely disappointed”.

“It may not be the most accurate biopic ever made, but it doesn’t matter. The film’s style is so kinetic and brimming with creativity that all you need to do is let yourself melt away and bask in the sheer audaciousness Luhrmann brings with every frame,” Vincent said.

While many critics gave the film raving reviews, others didn’t believe the movie quite lived up to its hype.

Film critic Robert Daniels from Roger Ebert gave the film a shockingly low score of one and a half stars, saying “ Elvis brings all of the glitz, rhinestones, and jumpsuits you’d expect in an Elvis film, but without the necessary complexity for a movie from 2022 about the ‘King'”.

Daniel claims that while the film isn’t without its pleasure, citing the film’s extrapolation of commerce and race, it all too often “slips into a great white hope syndrome, whereby Presley is the sincere white hero unearthing the exotic and sensual Black artists of his era. B.B. King, Big Momma Thornton, and Little Richard (real-life supporters of Presley) exist solely as either bulletin board cheerleaders or alluring beings from a far-off land.”

Daniels also says that while Hanks is known to be a biopic veteran, he wouldn’t consider him a “transformative actor”. Saying you could hear Hanks’s accent slipping while the heavy prosthetics was robbing him of his facial range, the “underrated tool in his repertoire”.

Daniels concluded his review by saying “ Elvis certainly works as a jukebox, and it does deliver exactly what you’d expect from a Luhrmann movie. But it never gets close to Presley; it never deals with the knotty man inside the jumpsuit; it never grapples with the complications in his legacy. It’s overstuffed, bloated, and succumbs to trite biopic decisions.”

Richard Brody from The New Yorker called Luhrmann’s film a “Wikipedia entry” saying the film “owes little to its sense of style; it’s a film of substance, but of bare substance, a mere photographic replica of a script that both conveys and squanders the power of Presley’s authentic tragedy.”

According to Brody, for “a movie that builds its drama around Elvis’s struggle to reconcile his private self and his public one, it has almost nothing to say about Elvis as a person.”

“ Elvis is a cold, arm’s-length, de-psychologized, intimacy-deprived view of Presley that Luhrmann microwaves with quick cuts, montages of multiple images arrayed side by side, tricky lighting, huge sets, crowd scenes, and, above all, the frenetic onstage impersonation of Elvis that its star, Austin Butler, delivers,” Brody said.

Elvis is now showing in Australian cinemas across the country.

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Review: Austin Butler does 'Elvis' proud with the grit and grace of his performance

"If he doesn’t get an Oscar for this, I will eat my own foot."

Austin Butler portrays Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann's film "Elvis".

"If he doesn't get an Oscar for this, I will eat my own foot."

That's not me talking. Those words come from Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie Presley in reference to Austin Butler, the electrifying new star who plays her father in Baz Luhrmann’s bejeweled battering ram of a biopic, "Elvis," out in theaters this week.

Butler also has Presley’s ex-wife Priscilla in his corner. If you suspect all this family support means Luhrmann’s impressionistic, pop-cultural opera isn’t telling the whole truth and nothing but about the rock legend, who died at 42 in 1977 but still reigns as King -- you’d be right.

PHOTO: Austin Butler portrays Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann's film "Elvis".

Even at two hours and 39 minutes, "Elvis" never seems to probe deep enough into the heart one of the greatest performers of the 20th century. But Luhrmann, the visual virtuoso of "Romeo+Juliet," "Moulin Rouge" and "The Great Gatsby," never misses a chance to wow us with sights and sounds that would have appealed to Elvis' own flamboyant sense of showmanship.

Nothing puts Butler in the shade, not even the glittering brilliance of the costumes and production design by Catherine Martin, Luhrmann's wife. He does his own singing as the young Elvis with his voice later blended with that of the real Elvis. Butler, 30, who started out in TV ("The Carrie Diaries") and on the periphery of Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," seizes the role of his career in "Elvis" and rides it to glory.

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Butler also shares the screen with another legend, Tom Hanks, who plays Colonel Tom Parker, the malevolent manager who devoted his life to controlling his most famous client and took half of his earnings in the process. "We are the same, you and I," Parker drawls, at one point in the movie. "We are two odd, lonely children, reaching for eternity."

Parker, who was born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, was a former carnival barker who entered the U.S. from the Netherlands unlawfully and kept Elvis from touring overseas out of fear his own past would be uncovered. Hanks, in a fat suit, facial padding and an accent Parker tried to pass off as Southern, gives his all to a role that the script sadly fails to develop.

There is some effort made to show how Elvis culturally appropriated the Black roots music that inspired him growing up in Tupelo and Memphis, Tennessee. And Luhrmann pushes hard -- his default mode -- for contemporary relevance by mixing Elvis hits with rap, hip-hop, country and dance beats.

Elvis ignited a cultural rebellion fired by his hip-swiveling gyrations to the devil’s music -- so labeled by the fundamentalist Christians at that time -- that inflamed teen girls and a lot of boys. "The way you sing is God-given," mama Presley, Helen Thomson, says in once scene, "so there can’t be nothin' wrong with it." Moral watchdogs disagreed.

Parker quickly tries to defuse public outrage by having Elvis cut his hair, join the Army and appear in family-friendly movies. It's not until a 1968 TV comeback special that a leather-clad Elvis rebels against the Colonel by bringing his political passion, incited by the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., into his music ("If I Can Dream").

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The singer's physical decline, worsened by pills he used to get through Vegas engagements arranged to pay Parker's gambling debts, is conveyed to devastating effect by Butler. What a shame, then, that the movie's emphasis on Parker cheats us of the time Elvis spent with Priscilla (an underused Olivia DeJonge). "I never made a classic film I could be proud of," Elvis tells her.

Maybe so. With the exception of 1964’s vibrant "Viva Las Vegas," Elvis' 33 films are trifles. Still, you can see his latent acting talent in "King Creole," "Jailhouse Rock" and "Flaming Star." And Butler, a real-deal actor, makes that untapped potential palpable as he catches Elvis in the exhilarating act of inventing himself before being caught in the trap of his own celebrity.

Though Luhrmann's "Elvis" looks unlikely to achieve classic status as a film -- it keeps tripping on its own excess and the intrusion of the Colonel -- Butler does Elvis proud with the grit and grace of his performance. A star is born in Butler. Like Elvis, you can's take your eyes off him.

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‘Elvis’ Is Ecstatic, Jittery, Horny, Tireless, and Tragic. Just Like the King

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

It’s been a while since I felt beaten up by a movie. Leave it to Baz Luhrmann to end that lucky streak. And with a movie about Elvis Presley , no less — hardly a subject to approach casually. Elvis , in the epic tradition of all of Luhrmann’s work, is a brash, overwhelming experience. It’s a carnival in movie form: a grand, restless, swirling contraption that’s as grotesque as any bloody-mouthed geek and as uncomfortably poignant as a sad clown. It’s too much. Yet if it were any less excessive, it wouldn’t be as doggedly effective as it often is. Elvis begins at the end — not of Presley’s life, but of the life that consumed and distorted it: Colonel Thomas Parker, his longtime manager. Played by a jowly and insistently unappealing Tom Hanks , Parker is the grandmaster of the tragic spectacle to follow. He is our narrator and admonisher, the man with the megaphone and the whip. A bedridden nobody with the movie starts, Parker can barely get this story out without being haunted by his own memories, particularly of a moment when, late in Elvis’ life, the performer is practically sleepwalking from exhaustion, and Parker says, “ The only thing that matters is that that man gets up on that stage tonight .” There he is: the King (played by a sensational Austin Butler) sprawled on the ground, barely alive and being pumped with fluids so that he can be trotted out on stage like a reanimated corpse.

It’s no wonder Parker’s narration of this story, which frames the entire movie, bears the gutless stench of a deathbed confession. Parker tells us that the death of Elvis was in large part the fault of the public’s love and adoration, its unceasing need for more , to which Elvis became as addicted as he was to the barbiturates and alcohol that spelled his certain downfall. We already know better. Colonel Parker is preparing us for a story of Elvis’ rise and fall, which is in turn the story of his own rise and fall. Man, myth, and legend are collapsed into one hip-heaving, acutely talented, blue-eyed soulster whose tragedy is preordained by the fact that his story still belongs to the man who bled it dry. If you want the usual biopic bullet points, this movie’s got them. But we should know by now that the director of Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby will not give it to us in a straight line. This is, yes, the story of Elvis’ life, from impoverished and troubled birth to premature, unglamorous death. But every stop along the way is given the weight of a totalizing, world-shaking event: Before Elvis gets big , he’s already big. His wandering into a Black church and catching the spirit as a shoeless child in Tupelo, Mississippi, rings out with the audacious grandeur of an event that will change the course of history — which, in its way, it was. Elvis hits the necessary details, carves out the storied, prominent eras in Elvis’ personal and professional life: his Beale Street era, his Hollywood era, his time in the military, his courtship of and marriage to Priscilla Presley (Olivia DeJonge), his fated run at Vegas’ International Hotel, and on and on, flashing backward to his origin and forward to the long aftermath of his death, when we meet Parker again and are forced to remember just who it is that’s telling this story. When it works, it’s contagious. We largely have Austin Butler to thank for that. How Butler survived this role, with all of its ecstatic rebounds and tireless, jittery, sweat-stained feats of performance, is a mystery. Maybe the best thing you can say about Elvis is that the movie knows what it has. Luhrmann’s movie doesn’t need an Elvis impersonator. It needs an actor who can survive the movie — who can not only stand out from Luhrmann’s heavy sensationalism, but who can also convince us that beneath all the shiny surfaces and visual outbursts, there’s a person. Butler’s Elvis is a convincing performer — you believe, quite incredibly, that this is a man people couldn’t take their eyes off of — but he’s also credibly flawed, and daring.

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He’s also tasked with oozing sex appeal, and this works, too. Elvis is an incredibly horny movie. It has to be. You aren’t getting this story right if we cannot believe that the man’s hip-shaking was worthy of his being labeled a public enemy. Luhrmann of course has to drive the point home with energetic tastelessness, dialing up the ooh’s and aah’s until they resemble outright orgasms. Butler’s job is to make that plausible: He has to meet Luhrmann blow for blow. The movie’s makeup and costuming team gives him a deft assist, caking him in sweat as thick as motor oil when he’s performing and squeezing him into criminally tight jeans meant to get the imagination going. In the end, it’s still up to Butler to do all of this and give Luhrmann’s style the soul it needs to make it all make sense.

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Elvis is an entertaining movie about the man’s sex appeal and a pretty good movie about his life, even as it never dials things back enough for anyone to catch a breath. Luhrmann’s zigzagging, triumphantly kitschy style suits his subject. But a movie about Elvis made on this scale, even by a director like Luhrmann, whose work isn’t immediately recognizable as political, is saddled with other responsibilities. This is, after all, a story inseparable from the history and public sentiment that surrounded Presley. That includes the political efforts to ban him, but it also includes the attitudes behind those efforts — the Black styles and sounds that made even the white Elvis threatening. He’s credited with a sexual awakening among young people, it’s true, but he was also a vehicle for Black music finding its way onto white radio stations, Black movement slipping into white living rooms.

Maybe unsurprisingly, then, Elvis puts more than a little effort into settling the matter of Elvis and race — Elvis and Black musicians, that is. It starts with that early memory of him slipping into Black spaces as a child and being caught up in the music that he would grow to love. It puts some of his most famous songs — Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog,” for example — back into the mouths of the Black musicians who first wrote them. It situates Elvis the man as an appreciator of that music, a joyous recipient and beneficiary, not the thief many have claimed him to be over the years. Elvis the legend, meanwhile, becomes inseparable from the music he loved. Even the movie’s engagement with the history and politics of Elvis’ moment seems to come back to this. We get news of the deaths of JFK, RFK, and MLK, as we must. But in that last case, what registers more urgently is Mahalia Jackson’s performance at the fallen civil rights leader’s funeral — a curious moment that starts with the funeral telecast playing in the background of Elvis and Priscilla bickering (yet again) before Mahalia’s voice catches Elvis’ attention. What arises after this is the era of Elvis getting back to his roots, in a way, juggling the need to make political statements, as his performances in defiance of obscenity laws plainly did, with his desire to play it safe and stay out of it. B. B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola Quartey), Little Richard (Alton Mason), Arthur Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.), Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh), and Mahalia Jackson (Cle Morgan) flow into and out of this movie with an ease that amounts to more than inspiration for Elvis. They’re seen performing at length, with Elvis often watching; by the time he performs the covers of Black music that would come to define his career, we’ve already been educated on the source. Even a couple of the needle-drops sprinkled throughout modernize Elvis’ tunes by way of hip hop and other styles that point back to Black music, just as, in the movie’s depiction, Elvis openly points back to that music. This doesn’t quite amount to a confrontation with the problem at hand, which isn’t only a matter of theft or inspiration, but of profit. On this subject, the movie imbues its throng of legendary Black musicians with world-weary understanding. It underestimates their anger, more invested in Elvis’ appreciation of them. Whether that’s a useful trade-off will depend on us. Elvis is in many ways, about “us” — the people out there in the crowd that the King, in his International Hotel performances, would make a point of gazing back at, turning up the house lights to give faces to the anonymous throng of superfans staring up at him in the dark. It’s another of the more effective threads in this movie — Elvis’ relationship to the masses. Luhrmann’s movies are overripe with basic scenes that seem to have been shredded and put back together by a madman with a poisoned genius for finding ecstasy in even the smallest things. Watching Elvis feels a little like being electrocuted. But as a document of the loving masses, and of the thrill of seeing Elvis perform, this is all apt. As is the central tragedy of the film. In the end, we’re back in that hospital room with Parker, hearing the full, winding arc of his choice to sell out his and Elvis’ souls. He grafted both of their fates into a contract that would render Parker into both Faust and the devil and Elvis into a dying machine, performing to his last breath with the helplessness of a man who seems to have no choice, but whose fatigue never dulled his love for giving all he had to give. It’s an exhausting movie. That probably means that it’s doing something right.

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‘Elvis’ and Austin Butler feel the temperature rising

Austin Butler poses for portrait photographs for the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Austin Butler in a scene from “Elvis.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Director Baz Luhrmann, from left, Olivia DeJonge, Austin Butler, and Tom Hanks pose for portrait photographs for the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Olivia DeJonge, from left, Jerry Schilling, Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, director Baz Luhrmann, Priscilla Presley, Alton Mason, Natasha Bassett, and producer Patrick McCormick pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Director Baz Luhrmann poses for portrait photographs for the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Austin Butler, from left, director Baz Luhrmann, and Tom Hanks pose for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ in London Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Austin Butler poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ in London Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Natasha Bassett, from left, Jerry Schilling, Priscilla Presley, Olivia DeJonge, director Baz Luhrmann, Austin Butler, Alton Mason, Tom Hanks pose for photographers upon departure from the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Austin Butler, from left, and Priscilla Presley pose for photographers at the photo call for the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Thursday, May 26, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Olivia DeJonge, from left, Jerry Schilling, Austin Butler, director Baz Luhrmann, Alton Mason, and Catherine Martin pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Priscilla Presley, from left, Olivia DeJonge, director Baz Luhrmann, Austin Butler, Alton Mason and Tom Hanks pose for photographers after departing the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Actor Austin Butler greets fans as he arrives for a screening of the film, “Elvis,” in Toronto, Friday, June 17, 2022. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

Austin Butler, left, and Kaia Gerber pose for photographers after departing the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Director Baz Luhrmann, centre, poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Tom Hanks, from left, Olivia DeJonge and Austin Butler pose for photographers at the photo call for the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Thursday, May 26, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Austin Butler poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ in London Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Tom Hanks, left, and Baz Luhrmann pose for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ in London Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Yola, from left, Austin Butler, Olivia Dejonge, director Baz Luhrmann, Tom Hanks and Luke Bracey pose for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ in London Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

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On the day of Austin Butler’s final screen test for “Elvis,” director Baz Luhrmann threw everything at him.

Butler had spent five months building up to that moment, workshopping the role with Luhrmann, doing hair and make-up tests, rehearsing the songs. Against the odds, Butler had emerged as the unlikely favorite to land the role over more established names like Harry Styles, Miles Teller and Ansel Elgort. But it wasn’t official yet.

And during the screen test, Luhrmann flipped the script. Some of the scenes Butler had prepped went out the window. In others, Luhrmann fed him lines from behind the camera. The one minute of “Suspicious Minds” that Butler was to perform in a Presley jumpsuit stretched to six.

“I got home and I really thought: ‘I don’t think I got that. I felt like my hands were tied behind my back,’” Butler said in a recent interview.

A week later in Los Angeles, the 30-year-old actor’s phone rang. Luhrmann was calling from Australia.

“I look at the phone and go, ‘OK, this is the moment,’” says Butler. “I pick up the phone and he was very dramatic and downcast. He goes, ‘Austin, I just wanted to be the first one to call you and say ... Are you ready to fly, Mr. Presley?’”

When “Elvis” opens in theaters Friday, it will resurrect one of the most iconic figures in American music in the biggest, most bedazzled film to ever try to capture the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. And it will propel Butler, an Orange County, Calif., native best known to this point for playing Tex Watson in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood,” onto a far bigger stage.

“It all feels sort of like this wonderful dream,” Butler said the morning after the film’s Cannes Film Festival premiere . “I have to take moments to take a deep breath and say, ‘This is real life.’”

What’s real and what’s fake in the exaggerated land of the much-imitated Elvis hasn’t always been easy to discern. “Elvis,” which Luhrmann co-scripted, doesn’t take a standard biopic view of Presley but tells his story through Presley’s infamous manager, Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), a former carnival barker who guided Presley to stardom but exploited and manipulated him until Presley’s death in 1977. Parker narrates the tale, adding a dimension about the nature of show business and performance.

“Baz in the very first meeting said, ’Look, this is a story about two people. There would have never been an Elvis without a Col. Tom Parker, and, in his own mind, there would have never been a Col. Tom Parker without Elvis,” says Hanks. “As soon as he said that, I thought, ‘Well, this is going to be new turf, and worthy of the Baz-maximalist-confetti-strewn style of moviemaking.’”

And, like “The Great Gatsby” and “Moulin Rouge,” “Elvis” is indeed an extravagant, maximalist Baz-styled blow-out. As you’d expect, it breezes through pivotal moments in the Mississippi-born Memphis singer’s life and a jukebox of songs. But “Elvis” also offers a more youthful, rebellious portrait of Presley as a product of Black gospel music, a hip-shaking sex symbol in eyeliner and a progressive-minded nonconformist whose closely controlled career reflected cultural battles of then and now. Butler’s is an electric Elvis, not campy nostalgia act, with more Bowie in him than you might expect.

“I’m not here to tell the world that Elvis is a great person. I’ll tell you what he is for me,” says Luhrmann. “Everyone has their Elvis.”

“My job generally is to take things that are considered either boring or old-fashioned or not relevant and shake off the rust, and recode them” says Luhrmann, maker of the modern-day “Romeo + Juliet.” “Not to change them, just to retranslate them so their value is once again present.”

Presley’s value to contemporary audiences, while still beyond most of his contemporaries, has faded somewhat. To many, he represents the appropriation of Black music. Some relatively recent productions — the 2005 Broadway musical “All Shook Up,” Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show in Las Vegas — failed to catch on substantially.

All of which meant that Butler had a lot riding on his shoulders. For him, it was essential to find ways to make Presley more human than superhuman. One resonant connection for the actor was learning that Presley’s mother died when he was 23, the same age Butler was when he lost his mom. And like Presley, an initially timid performer, Butler grew up shy.

“I could then go: ‘When I feel afraid and I feel like all the pressure’s on me and I’m terrified of falling on my face, he felt those things,’” says Butler. “So then I could go: ‘It’s OK to feel the fear. It’s how you channel it.’”

“Elvis” is most moving in its second half, in the Vegas section of the film, when Presley was often reaching artistic highs on stage during his 1969-1976 run at the International Hotel but was increasingly trapped by Parker (who refused to tour Presley internationally) and drug use. Priscilla Presley, who has enthusiastically supported the film, is played by Olivia DeJonge.

“A lot of the characters in this film are larger-than-life, and authentically larger than life,” says DeJonge. “With Priscilla, I wanted to make sure she felt grounded and more like Elvis’ breath so that whenever he’s with her, he’s relaxed.”

Before “Elvis” began shooting in Memphis, Hanks had dinner with Priscilla Presley, who then described her ex-husband as “an artist as unique as Picasso and as popular as Charlie Chaplin that really only felt truly himself and at home when he was singing.”

While a more villainous role represents a rare departure for Hanks — who tested positive for coronavirus during the film’s Australia shoot, an indelible early pandemic moment — “Elvis” is also typical for the actor in that it grapples with American history and exists as a standalone drama. “Elvis” will be competing primarily with franchise installments in theaters this summer.

“The concept of franchise now is so much a part of the entertainment industrial complex that for me, I just don’t think it’s very fun,” says Hanks. “Everybody knows that I’ve been doing this for an awfully long time so I think they’re going to have just as much faith that they’ll get all three acts out of me, and then they’ll decide if it was worth seeing or not.”

Reviews have been largely positive for “Elvis,” but they’ve been glowing for Butler. (In the film, he sings some songs while Presley’s voice is used in others.) The actor reckons he devoted two years of his life to the film, obsessively researching Presley and gradually transforming into him. Butler went through daily routines wondering how Presley did them. When the movie wrapped, Butler struggled to let go.

“Suddenly it was me brushing my teeth, now it’s me doing these mundane things. It was a real existential crisis when I finished,” says Butler. “The next morning, I woke up and I couldn’t walk. I thought my appendix burst. It was the most excruciating pain in my stomach, so they took me to the emergency room. It’s wild how your body can kind of hold on for the duration of doing something.”

The first big scene Butler shot, on the second day of production, was Presley taping his momentous comeback special. The scene put a leather-clad Butler isolated on stage, with little to rely on beside his own ability to thrill a crowd. His nerves nearly overwhelmed him.

“But that terror of my whole career feeling like it was riding on this film, that’s exactly what Elvis was feeling,” says Butler. “His musical career was on the line. It was make or break for him. So I could rest in that. Then I went out there and it was like having an out of body experience.”

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

Review: 'Elvis' is one fried peanut butter and banana sandwich of a movie, tasty but overstuffed

Baz Luhrmann ’s musical drama “Elvis” has all the pomp and pompadour one would expect by putting Elvis Presley ’s iconic life on screen. If only the storytelling was as dazzling as his bejeweled jumpsuits.

The relationship between Elvis ( Austin Butler ) and his notorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ), is at the center of an overlong, narrative mess (★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; HBO Max , Amazon Prime , Apple TV , Vudu , Google Play and other on-demand platforms), as excessive as one of the King's fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

However, with Butler’s stellar portrayal , it’s never dull, and more enjoyable than not. The musical numbers are often dazzling, boosted by Luhrmann’s inimitable style. And the plot (for better and for worse) covers a ton of Presley’s life . But even when it’s over, you’re still not sure what Hanks is doing.

America’s Dad plays the literal heavy in “Elvis,” which at first is told from Parker’s perspective (although it doesn’t stay that way). A manipulative carny at his core, the Colonel watches young Elvis perform, and sees potential for the greatest show on Earth. And he’s not wrong: The Mississippi-born Memphis kid with rockabilly hair and a gawky frame goes on stage, does a “wiggle” with his hips, and female fans go absolutely bonkers. Not so shockingly, "Elvis the Pelvis" doesn’t play well in the conservative Bible Belt of the South.

Fact checking the new 'Elvis' movie: Did he really fire Colonel Tom Parker onstage in Las Vegas?

The film quickly rolls through his early days as a rising star in the 1950s, as Parker convinces Elvis to take him on as manager, and the singer causes enough of a ruckus that getting drafted into the Army is a decent PR move. Stationed in Germany, he meets future wife, Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), whom Elvis begins to trust more than the sly, shady Colonel.

After the movie’s fever-dreamy first half, Luhrmann puts on the brakes from that breakneck pace as he reaches the late 1960s. After Elvis’ foray into Hollywood, he and Parker land in Las Vegas, where Presley has a musical comeback, but goes down a bad path as the Colonel pulls strings behind the scenes like a devilish puppet master. (When Elvis sings “Suspicious Minds,” the timing is right on the nose.)

'I couldn't be an imposter': How Austin Butler vanished into the role of Elvis Presley

Butler makes for a phenomenal King of rock ’n’ roll because, rather than going the impersonator route, he grows into being Elvis just as the real one did, from truck driver to musical deity. And while Presley's own vocals were used in the latter part of the movie, Butler sings the early songs and brings real electricity to a performer who's just beginning to leave the world all shook up.

Hanks’ Parker is a harder sell. The makeup and prosthetics work is amazing, but the character never quite lands, as Hanks’ accent bounces from German to Leprechaun to “evil Woody after a hard life in the toy box.” (In reality, the Colonel was Dutch.) Also hampering his role: The movie centers on Parker for a good bit – with hints of unreliable narration and scenes where he takes control of the plot in meta fashion – but never fully commits to his point of view, adding to the film’s haphazard nature.

Austin Butler as 'Elvis': His acting lessons began when Tom Hanks delivered a typewriter to his door

While the kitchen-sink approach to Presley’s life doesn’t totally work, the film does have fits of strength. DeJonge is spot-on as Priscilla, although Elvis’ marriage is treated mainly as a subplot. The movie also interestingly dips into his respect for (and relationship with) the influential Black musicians of Beale Street, such as B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.).

Luhrmann’s gift for presenting musical fantasias, proven in his glorious “Moulin Rouge,” is on display here, not only with the well-crafted Butler scenes, but with a stirring performance of “Hound Dog” by Shonka Dukureh (as Big Mama Thornton), a soulful “That’s All Right” courtesy of Gary Clark Jr. (channeling Arthur Crudup), and a show-stopping “Tutti Frutti” from Alton Mason (who plays Little Richard).

You can’t help falling in love with the music, Butler's transformation into a legend and Luhrmann’s signature flourishes: Comic-book panels reflect Presley’s love of superheroes, and there's a groovy ‘60s-style movie montage. However, at the risk of checking into Heartbreak Hotel, don’t get your hopes up for a cohesive classic befitting a King.

First 'Elvis' trailer: Austin Butler explodes to life as Presley in Baz Luhrmann's new movie

CinemaCon: 'Elvis' movie wows with Doja Cat, 'superhero' story for 'a younger generation'

From The Vault
Cutting Room Floor

The Elvis movie that made Roger Ebert “miserable”

Elvis Presley , the iconic King of Rock’ n’ Roll, also carved a niche for himself in Hollywood’s golden era. With hits like Jailhouse Rock , Blue Hawaii , and Viva Las Vegas , his magnetism transcended from the stage to the silver screen effortlessly. Yet, in the vast landscape of his cinematic journey, not every venture was met with universal acclaim. One film, in particular, caught the critical ire of the legendary critic Roger Ebert.

In the realm of film criticism, few names were as influential as Ebert. His reviews, insightful and poignant, were often revered for their ability to dissect a film’s essence. Ebert, however, with his acute understanding of cinema, was not one to shy away from expressing his unabridged thoughts on a movie – great or terrible. Despite his vast appreciation for a myriad of genres, there was one film of the King’s that he found decidedly less than royal.

In his 1967 review on RogerEbert.com of Easy Come, Easy Go , Ebert went beyond mere critique. The Elvis vehicle, directed by John Rich and produced by the legendary Hal B Wallis for Paramount, featured the singer as a Navy officer, Ted Jackson, in pursuit of Spanish gold. After putting a viewing off, Ebert revealed that eventually, he “went to my neighbourhood theatre, and I went inside for the Saturday matinee, and I sat down with the kids and the teenage couples, and I saw the movie.” However, the anticipation ended there.

“And if you think this has all been an elaborate buildup for some unexpected surprise like I liked it, you’re wrong. I was miserable from beginning to end.” He compared it unfavourably to Singin’ in the Rain and West Side Story , praising these as examples of good movie musicals. He even mentioned A Hard Day’s Night which, in his words, “slipped up and became great instead of merely good.”

Yet, when discussing Easy Come, Easy Go , he lamented its lack of care, a film created with “the sole purpose of contriving a plot, any plot, to fill in between when Elvis sings.” Even the plot, involving Elvis’ character discovering treasure, Ebert felt he didn’t want to spoil – perhaps hinting at its predictability or simply not wanting to waste any more words on what he thought was a pointless movie.

Interestingly, the film’s soundtrack mirrored its lukewarm reception, with songs like ‘You Gotta Love’ and ‘The Love Machine’ not making a mark on the charts. However, 1967 was just a brief eclipse for Elvis, who would soon shine again with his ’68 Comeback Special and chartbusters like ‘Guitar Man’ and ‘If I Can Dream’.

Now, we’re more than willing to concede that Ebert wasn’t always the arbiter of quality cinema one hundred per cent of the time. He’s panned some classics that, in his own words, he felt “silly” later for judging so harshly – however, based on the trailer and synopsis, we have a feeling Easy Come, Easy Go isn’t one of them.

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Rating	Title \| Year	Review
3.5/4	(2008)	What happens would not make sense in many households, but in this one, it represents a certain continuity, and confirms deep currents we sensed almost from the first. \| Posted Mar 29, 2024
3.5/4	(1995)	Seven, a dark, grisly, horrifying and intelligent thriller, may be too disturbing for many people, I imagine, although if you can bear to watch it, you will see filmmaking of a high order. \| Posted Mar 29, 2024
4/4	(2000)	Oh, what a lovely film. I was almost hugging myself while I watched it. \| Posted Mar 26, 2024
4/4	(1994)	Quentin Tarantino is the Jerry Lee Lewis of cinema, a pounding performer who doesn't care if he tears up the piano, as long as everybody is rocking. \| Posted Mar 01, 2024
3.5/4	(2001)	Amelie is a delicious pastry of a movie, a lighthearted fantasy in which a winsome heroine overcomes a sad childhood and grows up to bring cheer to the needful and joy to herself. You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile. \| Posted Feb 13, 2024
2/4	(1990)	Brown turns in a smooth, professional job in his debut as a writer-director, but the movie is undermined somewhat by his single-minded vision of it as a message picture. \| Posted Dec 26, 2023
3.5/4	(1995)	Above all, the dialogue is complex enough to allow the characters to say what they're thinking: They are eloquent, insightful, fanciful, poetic when necessary. They're not trapped with clichés. \| Posted Dec 21, 2023
2.5/4	(1990)	If Home Alone had limited itself to the things that might possibly happen to a forgotten 8-year-old, I think I would have liked it more. \| Posted Nov 29, 2023
1.5/4	(1979)	It's put together rather curiously out of disjointed scenes, snatches of dialog, and brief strokes of characterization. \| Posted Nov 28, 2023
3/4	(1985)	"Cocoon" is one of the sweetest, gentlest science-fiction movies I’ve seen, a hymn to the notion that aliens might come from outer space and yet still be almost as corny and impulsive as we are. \| Posted Nov 12, 2023
4/4	(1929)	A movie like this is a tonic. It assaults old and unconscious habits of moviegoing. It is disturbing, frustrating, maddening. It seems without purpose... \| Posted Nov 02, 2023
4/4	(1972)	Play It as It Lays is an astringent, cynical movie that ultimately manages to spin one single timid thread of hope. \| Posted Sep 28, 2023
2.5/4	(1966)	It is a film made entirely in the mind, as if the heart were no concern, and it can be seen that way -- as a cold, aloof study of human neurosis. But not for a moment did I care about any of the characters. \| Posted Sep 20, 2023
4/4	(2000)	Soderbergh's film uses a level-headed approach. It watches, it observes, it does not do much editorializing. The hopelessness of anti-drug measures is brought home through practical scenarios, not speeches and messages -- except for a few. \| Posted Sep 08, 2023
4/4	(1996)	John Sayles' Lone Star contains so many riches, it humbles ordinary movies. And yet they aren't thrown before us, to dazzle and impress: It is only later, thinking about the film, that we appreciate the full reach of its material. \| Posted Sep 06, 2023
4/4	(1994)	Alcoholism has been called a disease of denial. What When a Man Loves a Woman understands is that those around the alcoholic often deny it, too, and grow accustomed to their relationship with a drunk. \| Posted Sep 01, 2023
4/4	(1984)	[This] is the kind of movie that Paul Mazursky does especially well. It's a comedy that finds most of its laughs in the close observations of human behavior, and that finds its story in a contemporary subject Mazursky has some thoughts about. \| Posted Aug 22, 2023
2/4	(1989)	The Gotham City created in Batman is one of the most distinctive and atmospheric places I’ve seen in the movies. It’s a shame something more memorable doesn’t happen there. \| Posted Jul 25, 2023
3/4	(1995)	Hate is, I suppose, a Generation X film, whatever that means, but more mature and insightful than the American Gen X movies. In America, we cling to the notion that we have choice... In France, Kassovitz says, it is society that has made the choice. \| Posted Jul 20, 2023
4/4	(1999)	Magnolia is operatic in its ambition, a great, joyous leap into melodrama and coincidence, with ragged emotions, crimes and punishments, deathbed scenes, romantic dreams, generational turmoil and celestial intervention, all scored to insistent music. \| Posted Jul 15, 2023
4/4	(2001)	The movie is a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir, and the less sense it makes, the more we can't stop watching it... This is a movie to surrender yourself to. \| Posted Jul 11, 2023
4/4	(1985)	It is a great, warm, hard, unforgiving, triumphant movie, and there is not a scene that does not shine with the love of the people who made it. \| Posted May 31, 2023
4/4	(1981)	[Raiders of the Lost Ark] grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality two hours later -- breathless, dizzy, wrung-out, and with a silly grin on your face. \| Posted May 04, 2023
3.5/4	(1989)	As I watched it, I felt a real delight, because recent Hollywood escapist movies have become too jaded and cynical, and they have lost the feeling that you can stumble over astounding adventures just by going on a hike with your Scout troop. \| Posted May 01, 2023
3.5/4	(1995)	It's an original, and what it does best is show how strangers can become friends, and friends can become like family. \| Posted Mar 15, 2023
2/4	(1992)	Why is that animation can't seem to free itself from subtly racist coding? That objection aside, Little Nemo is an interesting if not a great film, with some jolly characters, some cheerful songs, and some visual surprises. \| Posted Mar 07, 2023
4/4	(1989)	Here, with a larger budget and stars in the cast, [Palcy] still has the same eye for character detail. This movie isn't just a plot, trotted out to manipulate us, but the painful examination of one man's change of conscience. \| Posted Jan 04, 2023
3/4	(1967)	The Penthouse, quite simply, is a pretty good shocker. Shockers are standard fare in the movies and always have been, but successful ones are rare. It's a relief to find one that's made with skill and a certain amount of intelligence. \| Posted Aug 16, 2022
4/4	(1983)	The most remarkable achievement of Terms of Endearment, which is filled with great achievements, is its ability to find the balance between the funny and the sad, between moments of deep truth and other moments of high ridiculousness. \| Posted Jul 21, 2022
4/4	(1984)	This is Mozart as an eighteenth-century Bruce Springsteen, and yet (here is the genius of the movie) there is nothing cheap or unworthy about the approach. \| Posted Jul 11, 2022
4/4	(1967)	We need more American films like Up the Down Staircase. We need more films that might be concerned, even remotely, with real experiences that might once have happened to real people. And we need more actresses like Sandy Dennis. \| Posted Jul 06, 2022
4/4	(1979)	It is a beautifully visualized period piece that surrounds Tess with the attitudes of her time -- attitudes that explain how restricted her behavior must be, and how society views her genuine human emotions as inappropriate. This is a wonderful film. \| Posted Jun 17, 2022
3/4	(1994)	I Like It Like That looks more unconventional than it is, but Martin puts a spin on the material with lots of human color and high energy. \| Posted Mar 02, 2022
3.5/4	(1964)	It's one of the most unusual films I've seen, a barrage of images, music and noises, shot with such an active camera we almost need seatbelts. \| Posted Feb 28, 2022
4/4	(1961)	The passage of time has been kinder to [Varda's] films than some of theirs, and Cléo from 5 to 7 plays today as startlingly modern. Released in 1962, it seems as innovative and influential as any New Wave film. \| Posted Feb 17, 2022
3/4	(1980)	This is a film that could have just been high-class, soft-core trash, but it sneaks in a couple of fascinating characters and makes them real. \| Posted Feb 15, 2022
4/4	(1929)	It's not the equal of Pandora's Box, but [Brooks's] performance is on the same high level. \| Posted Nov 30, 2021
3/4	(1992)	An enormously entertaining movie. \| Posted Aug 30, 2021
4/4	(1989)	The 10 films are not philosophical abstractions but personal stories that involve us immediately; I hardly stirred during some of them. \| Posted May 01, 2021
3/4	(1984)	"Flashpoint" is such a good thriller for so much of its length that it's kind of a betrayal when the ending falls apart. \| Posted Apr 15, 2021
2/4	(1979)	No matter what impression the ads give, this isn't even remotely intended as an action film. It's a set piece. It's a ballet of stylized male violence. \| Posted Mar 07, 2021
2/4	(1979)	Starting Over actually feels sort of embarrassed at times, maybe because characters are placed in silly sitcom situations and then forced to say lines that are supposed to be revealing and real. \| Posted Dec 17, 2020
2.5/4	(1966)	Georges Lautner's Galia opens and closes with arty shots of the ocean, mother of us all, but in between it's pretty clear that what is washing ashore is the French New Wave. \| Posted Oct 11, 2020
1/4	(1968)	If you can miss only one movie this year, make it I, A Woman. Here is a Swedish film which very nearly restores my faith in the cinema, demonstrating that all the other crummy movies I've had to sit through in this job weren't so bad. \| Posted Sep 26, 2020
3.5/4	(2009)	In addition to its effectiveness as a thriller, it is also a film showing a man in the agonizing process of changing his values. And it is a critique of a cruel penal system. \| Posted Sep 23, 2020
	(1969)	I have to admit, however, that I did enjoy the movie and found myself drawn into it. Director Ted Kotcheff is good with his actors. \| Posted Jul 28, 2020
3/4	(1988)	The results are very good - far better and funnier than most of what is being made these days. \| Posted Jul 18, 2020
1/4	(1973)	There's no tragedy in this movie, no sense of the vast scale of suffering outside the bunker. \| Posted Jun 13, 2020
3/4	(2010)	With "Essential Killing," [Jerzy] Skolimowski comes closer than ever before to a pure, elemental story. \| Posted May 05, 2020
1/4	(1987)	[This] is one of the most desperate comedies I've ever seen, and no wonder. The movie's premise doesn't work -- not at all, not even a little, not even part of the time -- and that means everyone in the movie looks awkward and silly all of the time. \| Posted Apr 22, 2020

IMAGES

Elvis Presley: The Searcher movie review (2018)
Elvis Presley: The Searcher movie review (2018)
This Is Elvis Movie Review & Film Summary (1981)
Elvis movie review & film summary (2022)
Elvis movie review & film summary (2022)
Elvis Presley movie reviews & film summaries

VIDEO

Siskel & Ebert Review The Films of... Stanley Kubrick
Fact-Checking Elvis Movies
Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS
Elvis (2022) 4K Movie Review
Oscar Predictions
ELVIS Movie Review

COMMENTS

Elvis movie review & film summary (2022)
Elvis. "Elvis" brings all of the glitz, rhinestones, and jumpsuits you'd expect in an Elvis film, but without the necessary complexity for a movie from 2022 about the "King.". Maximalist filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, who abhors visual restraint and instead opts for grand theatricality, should be the perfect creator for a Presley biopic, but ...
This Is Elvis movie review & film summary (1981)
The young Elvis in this movie is an entertainer of incredible energy and charisma. The charisma stays, but somewhere along the way we notice a change in his behavior, a draining away of cheerfulness, a dreadful secret scourge. And in the film's final scenes, Presley is shockingly ill: He's bloated, his skin is splotchy, he's shaking and ...
Elvis Presley movie reviews & film summaries
The Great Craft of 2023. The Editors | 2023-12-27. On some of the best craft of the year in film, including The Boy and the Heron, The Holdovers, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Poor Things, and many more.
Elvis Presley: The Searcher movie review (2018)
Elvis, in a sky-blue suit with a jangling shiny belt, sideburns bristling down his face, replied, "The image is one thing. The human being is another. It's very hard to live up to an image." The image of Elvis shifts, depending on the entry point. What is so refreshing—damn near redeeming—about HBO's two-part documentary "Elvis Presley: The ...
Cannes review: Electrifying Elvis delivers the icon like never before
Elvis has an extended centerpiece that you can't quite believe arrives in a major studio movie: a behind-the-scenes exfoliation of Presley's landmark 1968 TV comeback special, during which Parker ...
Elvis & Nixon movie review & film summary (2016)
This story was told with more flair in the 1997 Showtime TV movie "Elvis Meets Nixon," directed by Allan Arkush of "Rock 'n' Roll High School" fame, and it's probably to the filmmakers' benefit that Arkush's movie is so difficult to see these days. It had an exuberant goofy quality, bordering on "Doonesbury"-style political satire, that's ultimately more compelling than this movie's shambling ...
Cannes 2022: Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind ...
A few years ago "Rocketman" had a splash premiere, complete with Elton John and the film's star Taron Egerton serenading the black-tie crowd in the Grand Lumière. Having just walked down the beach to arrive at my press screening of that film, I had the most surreal experience of realizing that the "I'm Still Standing" video that is mirrored in the film's climax was shot on the ...
'Elvis' Review: Shocking the King Back to Life
Graceland is a pilgrimage spot and a mausoleum. Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" — a biopic in the sense that "Heartbreak Hotel" is a Yelp review — works mightily to dispel this funerary gloom ...
This Is Elvis
Mar 2, 2019 Full Review Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times The movie's lesson is brutal, sad, and inescapable: Elvis Presley was a man who gave joy to a great many people but felt very little of his ...
Movie reviews and ratings by Film Critic Roger Ebert
Movie reviews and ratings by Film Critic Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert ... Movie reviews and ratings by Film Critic Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert. Movie Reviews TV/Streaming Interviews Collections Great Movies Chaz's Journal Contributors Inside Out 2 In this return to a familiar world, Pixar returns to its charming, effortlessly imaginative ways.
Elvis
PG-13 Released Jun 24, 2022 2h 39m Biography Drama Music. TRAILER for Elvis: Exclusive Final Trailer - Believe. List. 77% Tomatometer 398 Reviews. 94% Audience Score 10,000+ Verified Ratings. The ...
Elvis review: Baz Luhrmann's ridiculous, sublime biopic
By A.A. Dowd June 22, 2022. The first time we get a good look at the title character of Baz Luhrmann's caffeinated Wikipedia spectacular, Elvis, he's stepping out of the shadows and onto a ...
Elvis Mitchell movie reviews & film summaries
Brian Tallerico | 2023-02-24. The February physical media and streaming column includes The Fabelmans, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Empire of Light, Strange World, and Decision to Leave. Elvis Mitchell movie reviews & film summaries | Roger Ebert.
'Elvis' review: Movie by Baz Luhrmann brilliantly floods our senses
In 'Elvis,' Baz Luhrmann brilliantly floods our senses with arresting sights and sounds The director's trademark razzle-dazzle surrounds Tom Hanks as an oily Colonel Tom Parker and Austin ...
Elvis (2022) Review
Release Date: 24 Jun 2022. Original Title: Elvis (2022) It's been close to a decade since Baz Luhrmann 's last movie. Any question that time may have mellowed him is answered within the first ...
Elvis (2022) Movie Review
Elvis may have left the building, but Baz Luhrmann brings him back for the ultimate encore performance. Like The King himself, Elvis (2022) is a dazzling, daring, delightfully over the top slice of rock'n'roll history. But like Elvis, the blistering source material is ultimately mismanaged and overstays its welcome with a flabby denouement that - almost - overshadows its early brilliance.
Is the 'Elvis' biopic a home run or complete miss? Here's what critics
Film critic Robert Daniels from Roger Ebert gave the film a shockingly low score of one and a half stars, saying " Elvis brings all of the glitz, rhinestones, and jumpsuits you'd expect in an ...
Review: Austin Butler does 'Elvis' proud with the grit and grace of his
Austin Butler portrays Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann's film "Elvis". Even at two hours and 39 minutes, "Elvis" never seems to probe deep enough into the heart one of the greatest performers of the ...
'Elvis' Review: Biopic Is Ecstatic, Jittery, Horny, Tireless, & Tragic
There's a whole lotta shakin' going on in Baz Luhrmann's epic biopic — a movie where the director's notorious excesses suit the subject. It's been a while since I felt beaten up by a ...
'Elvis' and Austin Butler feel the temperature rising
Published 8:54 PM PDT, June 21, 2022. On the day of Austin Butler's final screen test for "Elvis," director Baz Luhrmann threw everything at him. Butler had spent five months building up to that moment, workshopping the role with Luhrmann, doing hair and make-up tests, rehearsing the songs.
'Elvis' movie review: Austin Butler rules as King over musical mess
After the movie's fever-dreamy first half, Luhrmann puts on the brakes from that breakneck pace as he reaches the late 1960s. After Elvis' foray into Hollywood, he and Parker land in Las Vegas ...
The Elvis movie that made Roger Ebert "miserable"
In his 1967 review on RogerEbert.com of Easy Come, Easy Go, Ebert went beyond mere critique.The Elvis vehicle, directed by John Rich and produced by the legendary Hal B Wallis for Paramount, featured the singer as a Navy officer, Ted Jackson, in pursuit of Spanish gold.
Roger Ebert Movie Reviews & Previews
Read Movie and TV reviews from Roger Ebert on Rotten Tomatoes, where critics reviews are aggregated to tally a Certified Fresh, Fresh or Rotten Tomatometer score.