The movie’s depictions of Black music-making often feel flagrantly racist, shot after leering shot of carnal, frenetic ecstasy, while whole traditions like gospel, blues, and R&B are reduced to raw material for Elvis to bring forth to benighted white masses. King practically receives its own subplot, and Elvis’ oft-cited 1969 remark about Fats Domino being the real “King of Rock ’n’ Roll” shows up only as testament to the white singer’s humble generosity. Black characters exist as props whose primary function is to vouch for Elvis’ own mythic racial transcendence: The famous photo of a young Elvis standing arm-in-arm with a young B.B. In particular, the movie’s approach to race-surely the most controversial and forever unsettled aspect of Elvis’ legacy-is gallingly obtuse. The frantic, kitchen-sink nature of all of this lends an overarching glibness to the film, which is almost an impressive feat given its 159-minute running time. If your movie’s claim to novelty is exploring Tom Parker’s perspective on Elvis and his life and times, chances are you’ve already messed up.īlack characters exist as props whose primary function is to vouch for Elvis’ own mythic racial transcendence. 4080.) By all accounts Parker the man wasn’t particularly curious about music, the world around him, or even Elvis himself, at least anywhere past the capacity of these things to make him lots of money. Here that someone is Elvis’ longtime manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, a renowned scumbag who, as music-biz scumbags go, isn’t even all that exceptional. Elvis’ Elvis is played by Austin Butler, who does his best with the script he’s given and admirably avoids the pitfalls of impersonation, but whose naturalistic and introspective approach to the role never quite jibes with the garish, near-hallucinatory world of the film.Įlvis has little new to say about its title subject, and its ostensible fix for this is to make Elvis the main character in someone else’s story. Like much of Luhrmann’s work, Elvis is a hyperactive, showy, and gleefully un-subtle affair.

The latest entry in the Elvis-making canon is Baz Luhrmann’s cacophonous, fitfully entertaining, and mostly pointless Elvis.

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