Puzzling Presley biopic leaves you all shook up

THE King is a workmanlike documentary about the late Elvis Presley, but struggles to find anything new to say about the much-raked-over rock ’n’ roll legend.

There’s lots of switching back and forth between the past and the present and, at times, the filmmakers seem to be saying that the Memphis heartthrob embodied a rags-to-riches American Dream which is now dead. But at other moments they want us to embrace Elvis as a symbol of everything that is great and rotten about America, as if nothing’s really changed. How confusing.