Mason's Reviews: Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2022)
July 20, 2022
I've always been a distant fan of Elvis. Some of my favorite songs are his, but I don't have an entire playlist dedicated to his music as I do for other artists and bands.
Before seeing "Elvis", I assumed I had a good grasp of Elvis' history. At the very least, I understood his famous rendition of Unchained Melody was his last live performance. I understood his health was poor due to drugs and exhaustion. And I knew his performance of “Unchained Melody” was perhaps his best despite his health. (It's my favorite song.)
So, upon entering the theater, I was excited to see how the film would portray this final performance.
The film opens with a colorful, bedazzled CGI opening credit, followed by narration from Tom Hanks' Colonel Tom Parker.
Okay, I thought to myself. It's just opening with a bit of narration and CGI landscapes. No big deal.
To my displeasure, Hanks' unbearable accent and gaudy editing underscored the entire movie.
"Elvis" plays out like a giant, two-hour movie trailer. Every moment feels orchestrated to the second, leaving no time for a viewer to settle into a scene.
This aspect is unfortunate for Austin Butler, the film's shining light. He delivers an honest performance.
At some angles, he fooled me into thinking he was Elvis. Austin Butler moves, talks, and looks like Elvis.
But there aren't any scenes that give us enough time to take him all in. Every second of the movie pushes the plot forward. We don't get to see him be Elvis for more than a minute at a time. I think that's unfortunate given how great of a performance Austin Butler gives.
Too often, we're taken away from him by Tom Hanks, who gives a legitimately lousy performance. His accent struggles to find cohesion. His prosthetics aren't convincing. And he never materializes as anything more than your run-of-the-mill scummy circus man.
I'm not sure, but it feels like Colonel Tom Parker gets more screen time/dialogue than Elvis. For a film called "Elvis", this seemed like an odd choice on the part of the director, Baz Lurhmann.
This brings me to my biggest grievance for "Elvis": the final performance.
All in all, the film does a good job showing the steady decline of Elvis' health. By the end, we get a sense of how tired he was and how performing was the only thing that kept him going.
Therefore, I was mentally primed going into this scene to see a bloated, mumbling Elvis.
The scene goes as follows: Elvis approaches a piano bench and sits down. He mumbles a few words into a microphone held by a band member and begins the song.
I was ecstatic. I was getting an up-close, undivided look into Austin Butler's performance. I could see him struggle between breaths, strain to hit his notes, and sweat profusely.
It was great. We know how the rest of the story plays out for Elvis, so seeing the passion in what would be his final performance was genuinely moving.
And then my heart sinks. The scene cuts away to a montage of real-life Elvis clips resembling moments from the film. Meanwhile, the song continues to play.
We see more Elvis footage until it cuts back to the scene, only to be the real-life video of Elvis performing the song. And while it's nice to see the authentic performance, the video is old and grainy and shows a man, albeit the real one, whom we haven't spent the last two hours connecting with.
Then, the film ended, and I was sorely disappointed. It seemed disrespectful to Austin Butler's performance to cut away from him in the film's final, climactic moment. Elvis was Austin Butler's movie, and it should have ended with him.
Even worse, the scene gets interrupted with b-roll. I should have been used to it, but I couldn't believe the film cut away from this beautiful scene.
All in all, I think there's a better movie hidden somewhere in the film's 159-minute runtime. Unfortunately, fast-paced editing and an off performance from Tom Hanks waters down what otherwise was a stellar display of dedication from Austin Butler.
Austin Butler performs a song as Elvis in "Elvis", 2022.