Elvis

The short review of Elvis is really easy. It’s a Baz Luhrmann film, for better or worse. It’s a biopic about Elvis. It’s kind of Jukebox Musical using Elvis music.

If at least two of those things don’t grab you, you probably won’t like this film that much. I like the Luhrmann films I’ve seen (Romeo+Juliet, Moulin Rouge and Strictly Ballroom) and although I’m not really a fan of Elvis, I know his music and his death is the first celebrity death I really remember making the news so I was at least willing to engage on those parts.

The next thing that really matters is how well the lead makes you believe they present as the character they’re portraying. That’s particularly important here because, for reasons I guess I understand, the film is intercut with actual footage of Elvis' performances. Fortunately Austin Butler does a really good Elvis, the look, the moves, the accent and the singing. There are a number of songs reworked for telling the story here, and they sound like Elvis is singing them. He also performed all “young Elvis” music we see, and that’s the moving as well as the singing, and it really works. Kudos to him, it must have been tough stepping into those particular (blue suede) shoes but he pulled it off. Probably even more closely than Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody because he’s physically a better match. I was impressed by Malek because he got the mannerisms and the attitude right and I believed as I was watching his performance that I was watching Freddie even as a part of my brain was looking at him and saying “but…”. In this performance, that “but…” is not there.

I don’t know how accurate it is in strict biographical terms but I loved that the film made the links between Elvis' music and the blues and gospel music really clear. A deep friendship with BB King for example, might be real but it’s a great device in the film regardless.

This is a film I don’t feel any need to watch again, I’m not quite enough of an Elvis fan. But if it hits TV and I’m doing chores I would happily leave it on. If I was an Elvis fan I imagine I’d be buying this on Apple, or more likely DVD I guess, so I could put it on whenever I wanted.

Bechdel Test: Fail. There are several named female characters but just like in real life, Elvis' mother never met his wife (she died before he met Priscilla) and the characters from Beale Street don’t cross into the rest of his life as we see it here.

Ko Test: Pass. This is a musical, so I’m going to stretch the point of “speaking English” to include singing. But Big Mama Thornton is shown here, and between singing and speaking she manages five or six scenes. In case you don’t know, she was the first artist to record “Hound Dog” and she’s shown performing that here - one of those nods to the roots of Elvis' music I mentioned above.

Russo Test: Fail. We really only see Elvis' sexuality here. While he broke cultural norms and wore pink, had long hair (for the times) and wore eyeshadow, he definitely had an eye for the ladies.