Review: Elvis

A biopic of iconic rock ‘n’ roll star and occasional movie star Elvis Arron Presley (Austin Butler) as told by his self-serving manager Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks).

 

I’ve never been on the same wavelength as Baz Luhrmann (“Strictly Ballroom”, “Australia”, “The Great Gatsby”) and I likely never will be. I’m just not a ‘jazz hands’ guy. Still, this 2022 biopic is the first Luhrmann film I’ve actively hated and has me at odds with the general consensus it seems as well. For once this isn’t just a case of his films not being my cup of tea. I don’t drink tea, the film is just awfully done. To call the narrative episodic would be inaccurate because Luhrmann paces the film so rapidly that there’s not even time for episodes. And yet the film is 2 ½ hours long! It’s so choppy that it leaves poor lead actor Austin Butler playing a character who ultimately makes no impression despite being the subject of the film.

 

So let’s talk about Butler then. I think that – despite somehow getting an Oscar nomination – Butler is terribly miscast and out of his depth in the role. When playing one of the most well-known performers of all-time, you need to cast someone who looks the part, sounds the part, has charisma, and can act on top of that. At least on evidence here Butler has none of those things, especially in looks. He looks too boyish and soft. Elvis had boyish good looks early on, but boyish has the ‘ish’ on the end and it’s barely an ‘ish’ with Butler. He comes off more like an androgynous Calvin Klein model than the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll to me. The voice is almost there at times, but it’s an empty impersonation at best. I feel bad for him because he’s been given an impossible task. He looks nothing like Elvis (he looks more like k. d. Lang actually), clearly only does some of the singing himself (which doesn’t match the real deal we also hear in the film), and it’s hard to do the Elvis speaking voice without sounding like an inorganic impersonation. Elvis was one of a kind, after all. Most importantly, he wasn’t experienced enough as an actor at this stage to delve deeper in his overall performance (not helped by the shallow script). He’s been thrown into the deep end here and bizarre Oscar nomination not withstanding, I think he drowns. Lacking presence he seems somewhat reticent on screen to me, a little like Kristen Stewart in some of her early-to-mid career work where she looked like she didn’t want to be doing the profession she actively chose as her career.

 

It’s the direction and screenplay that deserve most of the criticism here, however. This is clearly a film with a distinct vision, a frequently pink vision for some reason. It’s a nice colour, but did the whole film have to be pink? It’s the exact film Luhrmann wanted to make. I just think his vision here is completely wrong-headed. But it’s not just the visuals. It’s also not just that it’s a non-traditional biopic that anachronistically uses hippity-hop on the soundtrack. That’s annoying but minor, though hearing a modern female cover of ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ in an Elvis biopic makes zero sense to me. You’ve got the real Elvis singing, Butler singing as Elvis, why do we need someone else chiming in and essentially breaking with reality? Even Luhrmann’s style – he has two modes: Razzle and Dazzle – as infuriating and off-putting as it is to me, is not the absolute worst thing here. No, for me Luhrmann’s inept handling of the narrative is what really sinks this film. Even more than the appallingly edited and structured “Bohemian Rhapsody”, this montage-heavy film is incoherent in terms of time and place. 20 minutes in and I had no idea where I was in the story because Luhrmann was in a hurry getting to…somewhere, even though it’s a 2 ½ hour film. The film moves from early Elvis to military Elvis to movie star Elvis in about 10 minutes in a film that is long enough to not have to do that. It makes no sense why it was done this way.

 

Outside of Butler, the rest of the cast is still pretty convincing. As Col. Tom Parker, Tom Hanks and his German accent are immediately unconvincing in his worst performance since “Bonfire of the Vanities”. It’s a dreadful miscalculation from the usually smart actor. He sounds nothing like the real man. Olivia DeJonge in no way shape or form convinces as Priscilla Presley, and while he seems like a top bloke Richard Roxburgh continues to be a bog average performer. David Wenham I like much more as an actor but is rendered boring here. Alton Mason plays Little Richard for two minutes and is the best thing in the film. Unfortunately, that’s 2 minutes in a 2 ½ hour film. Luhrmann doesn’t even do a convincing job of painting the 1950s. It felt far too modern at times to me, and I’m not just talking about the inclusion of hippity hop music.

 

I know Baz Luhrmann doesn’t do subtlety, but this biopic is all jazz hands all of the time. More importantly it never convinces, and despite being 2 ½ hours long, never slows down long enough to provide enough depth to its story or characters. A boring, overly flashy, poorly cast, and overall infuriating biopic. Some of you will wildly disagree and that's fine. Baz has his fans, I’m just not one of them. How can I possibly get into a film that never allows me the chance to find my bearings in its story or characters? The scattershot, ADHD screenplay had four hands in it; Luhrmann, Craig Pearce (“Strictly Ballroom”, “The Great Gatsby”), Sam Bromell (who comes from a background in shorts), and Jeremy Doner (who wrote four episodes of “The Killing”).

 

Rating: D