‘I’m gonna be forty soon, and nobody’s gonna remember me...’
Baz Luhrmann has long been accused of making films that are style over substance and while I feel that is a little harsh in the case of The Great Gatsby and Romeo and Juliet, there is certainly more than a ring of truth to that accusation when judged against Luhrmann’s entire output. Unfortunately, Elvis is the biggest culprit of all…
Charting the rise and fall of the king of rock ‘n’ roll in all of his wonderful glory, we have Austin Butler knocking it out of the park as Elvis, Tom Hanks providing a rare stinker as the nefarious ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker and a mostly forgettable supporting cast elsewhere – although Kelvin Harrison Jr. does a great job as B.B. King and Olivia DeJonge brings nuance and humanity to Priscella.
Let’s talk Luhrmann. The editing in this film is incredible, as is the cinematography, but as ever with the Australian director’s films, it eventually becomes more of a distraction than anything else. His usually reliable technique of mixing contemporary music with old standards simply doesn’t work here. When you have the music of Elvis Presley at your disposal, that’s what you should use. There is no need to modernise it. It’s inherently timeless.
Having said that, the biggest issue here is tone. Luhrmann tries to make the third act as resonant as possible but when you’ve got Hanks delivering one of his worst-ever performances in a cartoonish turn, it’s difficult to connect to anything else within the film on an emotional level.
It’s actually a massive shame that this film exists because there is definitely space on the cinematic landscape for a definitive Elvis biopic. And this film absolutely isn’t it. Butler inhabits the king in a way no other actor ever has, and with a less self-indulgent director, he could have been looking at one of the all-time great performances. As it is, he’ll have to settle for being the best thing about what is essentially a huge missed opportunity.
Elvis has left the building. Good riddance.