I've said this before but, modern movie suck. It's why I stopped reviewing films. At one point any review I posted would get thousands of hits. I was probably primed to start a youtube channel up, who knows maybe even get some of those sponsorships I got back when I was doing conventions. Sure I had other things going on in my life making regular postings harder, but that wasn't the main reason I stepped away. I stopped because movies are awful. I only watch a couple films a year that I would say are better than mediocre. I was tired of saying well this is a fun film or fans of x will probably enjoy this offering. Those are both nice ways of me saying, this film really isn't very good. My mostly positive reviews got me lots of retweets and hits by all the right people, and I just couldn't do it anymore. This brings me to Elvis, a film everyone likes but me. Which is why I felt I had to say something.
I'm going to keep my review of Elvis rather simple as I do all of my reviews. I could go into some pretty great detail about the rather odd choices the director made but I'll focus on the script and the actors. First of all the movie really isn't about Elvis, so much as it is about civil rights. I think a movie about black performers at that time would be awesome, but this was an Elvis film. While he certainly did grow up on the poor side of town with black people the way race is focused on in the film takes away from what Elvis himself was doing to become the star he eventually became. His youth is quickly glossed over and one part is even told in cartoon form. The most interesting part of any musician's biopic is those early years.
When and why did Elvis learn to play the guitar and piano? He was a truck driver, what was that like. Did he have many friends in high school, I heard he was rather strange. Who was Elvis before he became Elvis? Elvis toured with Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1956 they all jammed together at sun studios, newspapers called them the million dollar quartet. This is never even mentioned and it is a huge moment in musical history. Most likely this is because of the horrible choice to tell the story from the eyes of Colonel Parker, who didn;t sign Elvis until after he already had a hit song. This brings me to the actors.
I've never disliked Tom Hanks in a movie, until now. My lord that accent was distracting. It was completely overdone. Parker is given zero redeeming qualities in the film so you wonder why Elvis would have ever worked with him at all. Further, Elvis was drafted into the military, but he did not enlist. Do filmgoers really think a foreigner with no passport had any say so in what the military did? Elvis was even asked to simply sing for the troops but he declined and enlisted as a regular soldier. It is a bit of a put down to the man to say anything else.
Then we have Aaron Butler as Elvis. He looks nothing like Elvis. It was so bad it took me right out of the film. Aaron is to thin and feminine to play Elvis. HE plays the character like a confused child instead of the manly swagger Elvis had. Elvis exuded sexual energy, Aaron Butler does not. Also why they choose to put so much make-up on the actor is beyond me. It is very obvious. My only guess is they knew he wasn't as attractive as Elvis was? I have no idea but it is also very distracting.
They play very few Elvis songs in the movie and when they do they mash them up with music from the 2000's forward. It is pretty obvious they don't trust the audience to enjoy Elvis's music. I've never seen that in any other biopic. In the Queen movie, you got queen music. In the Elton John movie, you got Elton John music, In the Elvis movie, you got Hound Dog reimagined as a Doja Cat song. The director said he wanted audiences to understand how fresh the music sounded to young people back then. I don't quite believe that. I think you didn't trust your audience to like or get Elvis's music. Elvis, the man who sold 1.5 billion albums. Is the director serious? That's more than the Beatles at six hundred million and more than Micheal Jackson, who sold one billion, just for comparison.
So what is the real problem with the film? It's the same problem I see with many films. It's why I can't review films much anymore. They don't trust the audience. They don't really think people today will like Elvis or his story so they made him a more sympathetic character. Suddenly he is a huge advocate for civil rights. Not that he didn't believe in rights for all but this theme becomes the most important aspect of his career and not his life and music. They had to give the film some kind of agenda. So the movie isn't about Elvis anymore, it's secretly about musicians of color in the 50s. It's a cautionary tale too, that puts a magnifying glass on his relationship with Parker, sure, absolutely. Make no mistake though, the movie is more focused on its political agenda than it is on telling the story of Elvis. This is sad because Elvis deserves his story told, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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