Elvis The King rocks – so why wasn’t I all shook up?
Baz Luhrmann’s musical biopic is a fantastic feast for the eyes and ears as a young Presley explodes on to the world stage. But those years in Vegas do drag on…
Elvis
Cert: 12A, 2hrs 39mins
☆☆☆★★
The Big Hit
Cert: 15, 1hr 45mins
☆☆☆★★
The Black Phone Cert: 15, 1hr 42mins
☆★★★★
This is a review that has to begin with a frank confession – I do not care for the music of Elvis Presley. Never have, never will. His 1950s pomp came before I was born, I didn’t warm to those endlessly repeated films, and by the time I was old enough to take a proper view, he seemed to have become a tired caricature made up of silly lip curls, sexless hip wiggles and popped-up jumpsuit collars. Than’-you-veh-much.
So when 45 minutes, maybe even an hour, into Baz Luhrmann’s new biopic, I realised I was enjoying Elvis very much, it came as a welcome surprise. The energy is electric, the musical mash-up fantastic and I was loving Tom Hanks’s central performance as Colonel Tom Parker, even if it did seem heavily dependent on a fat-suit, prosthetic nose and an accent possibly borrowed from Batman’s archenemy, The Penguin.
Parker, of course, was Presley’s highly controlling manager, the carnival showman who became the Svengali-like power behind Presley’s initially relentless rise.
‘Yet some would make me the villain of the story,’ he purrs, as we slowly realise he’s going to be the unreliable narrator of this story: ‘But without me, there would be no Elvis Presley.’
As Presley, Austin Butler – a new name for me and, I suspect, others – is terrific, particularly in the first half when he brings youthful vitality, good looks and a convincing sex appeal to the role.
But he’s helped enormously by Luhrmann’s sheer musical creativity, as the director of Moulin Rouge! blends remixes, modernday tributes with black gospel and blues to such an extent that, at times, it hardly sounds like an Elvis Presley biopic at all.
Do listen out for the moment when even Eminem joins the brilliantly edited fun.
But Elvis is a seriously long film and eventually it starts to run out of energy. Most of the 1960s seem to pass in a flash and soon we’re bogged down in the familiar-feeling territory of endless Las Vegas residencies, Christmas specials and novelty jumpers. Oh, and drug addiction, too, for which – here, at least – the relentlessly scheming Parker is clearly blamed.
After such a wonderful opening, it’s an anti-climactic shame. Elvis is a big, big film and worth seeing for Luhrmann’s sheer creative ambition but I came out decidedly not ‘all shook up’.
The Big Hit, with its clear echoes of The Full Monty, is one of those French films surely crying out for an English-language remake but, even as you think that, you find yourself wondering how much might be lost.
Yes, I can see English-speaking producers warming to a story that sees an out-of-work actor taking over a prison theatre group and putting on a transformative show starring hardened criminals… but putting on Waiting For Godot, the notoriously befuddling, surrealist drama by Samuel Beckett? I can’t see that getting past the inevitable focus groups.
So maybe the sensible thing is to enjoy the French original as it is, with a wonderful central performance from Kad Merad, as the middle-aged, hang-dog-faced actor whose career has run out of steam and whose personal life is a mess. Yet he somehow finds the courage and vision to see the potential in the five-strong drama group at his local prison. Look out, too, for Marina Hands as the prison governor who slowly warms to his enthusiasm and idealism. Her character could have been much more fully developed… and maybe it will be if they ever do make an English version.
Even by the standard of its Stephen King-inspired, suburban killer genre, The Black Phone – in fact, based on a story written by King’s son Joe – proves an impossible film to enjoy.
If the child-on-child violence doesn’t get you, then the adult-onchild variety will.
And that’s before we meet the local kidnapper and masked murderer, nicknamed ‘The Grabber’ and improbably played by Ethan Hawke, and the story takes an unconvincing leap into the paranormal.
Yes, yes, we know the disconnected black phone in the soundproofed basement is going to ring. But, sorry, I’d already hung up.