new york times elvis movie review

Why Isn’t ‘Elvis’ a Home Run? Because It’s Not Actually Baz Luhrmann-ish Enough

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Reading the reviews of Baz Luhrmann ’s “ Elvis ,” one would be forgiven for thinking that it must be some madly baroque spectacle of exquisite excess, the sort of thing that makes people roll their eyes — or that makes the eyes of others widen with delight — when they hear the name “Baz Luhrmann.”

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There are ways you could say the movie lives up to that. “Elvis” kicks off with a 10-minute prelude of split-screen imagery that leaps ahead to Elvis in Las Vegas in the ’70s. The flamboyant virtuosity of the filmmaking gives you a contact high. Sitting through this fanfare, I thought, “Yes! Great! More!” (A trio of words that might be Baz Lurhmann’s middle names.)

Except that it’s not. Not really. I mean, not really .

“Elvis” is decorated with Baz touches: the outrageously bejeweled Warner Bros. logo at the start, the montage that transforms Elvis’s life with Priscilla and the Memphis Mafia in the ’60s into a kind of pastel Elvis movie, and the wicked gleam of Tom Hanks ’ performance as Col. Tom Parker. (Speaking in his Dutch-meets-Middle-American-carny-barker accent, Hanks reminded me of no one so much as the aging Nazi villain portrayed, with a greedy leer, by Laurence Olivier in “Marathon Man.”)

But if you look past those knowingly overheated touches, most of the two hours and 39 minutes of “Elvis” is a relatively straight Elvis Presley biopic. I’m a big fan of music biopics, and many of the ones I love — like “Get on Up” or “The Buddy Holly Story” — are, in form and spirit, films of sturdy conventionality. So if “Elvis,” as a movie, has its roots in conventional dramatic soil, you might well ask: What would be the problem with that?

The problem is that Luhrmann, as exciting a filmmaker as he can be (at his best, he’s a fevered wizard of spangly cinematic voodoo), is not an artist who excels in the arena of conventional storytelling. The way this plays out in “Elvis” is that the entire first half of the movie is less a dramatization of Elvis Presley’s life than a kind of skittery illustration of it. We keep being told things about Elvis — the way his musical mojo was defined by his Southern immersion in the blues and gospel, the pressure put on him to trim back the sexual flamboyance of his stage persona. But the scenes aren’t written so that we experience them from Elvis’s point-of-view. Instead, we’re peering into the movie, more occupied than immersed, tethered to Hanks’ narration but watching it all from a distance.

That’s why Austin Butler ’s performance feels remote in the first half. The actor, I’m sorry, fundamentally lacks Elvis’ flashing-eyed danger (that’s one reason his performance gets so much better once the film enters the late ’60s, when Elvis no longer was dangerous). And if you leave aside the caffeinated cutting, much of the first half of “Elvis” has the one-thing-after-another prosaic vibe of an energized-but-not-better-than-that TV-movie.

Over the next few months, and heading into awards season, viewers and critics alike will debate whether “Elvis,” as a drama, is good or bad or just okay or “Oscar-worthy” or better than “Bohemian Rhapsody” or not as good as “Ray,” or whatever. It’s my feeling that the movie, scattered and imperfect as it is, is truly something to see. That’s why I’m cheered by the prospect of the movie’s success. “Elvis” is an event, a surfacy but coruscating vision of the life of one of the five most important cultural figures of the last 100 years. Why shouldn’t viewers all over the world flock to see it? I hope they do.

Take the montage that compresses Elvis’s movie career — and most of the ’60s, right up until the taping of his 1968 comeback special — into just two minutes of screen time. It’s clever; Luhrmann devised a way to streamline Elvis’s story. But to me he does it in a way that’s false to the Baz Luhrmann aesthetic. Why not spend some time reveling in the kitschy glory of “Viva Las Vegas” — and use Elvis’ movie career as a way to show how Col. Parker was already draining the life out of him? I think it’s odd that “Elvis” devotes so much time to the taping of the 1968 special, all to make the point that Parker wanted Elvis to wear a Christmas sweater and sing Christmas songs — while Elvis, instead, was undermining the colonel by getting back in touch with his roots. This section is fun as TV sociology, but once again we’re outside of Elvis. We don’t feel connected to his soul until the film arrives in Vegas, at which point it totally takes off.

Suddenly, Elvis is in his glory as a white-suited, karate-chopping, five-rings-on-his-fingers rock ‘n’ roll showbiz king. But he’s also in prison, with the colonel as his evil warden, who has chained him to a contract that will turn him into a pill-popping zombie (and therefore, yes, the colonel really did kill him). In its final third, “Elvis” ascends. It’s almost like this is where the movie really starts. The “Unchained Melody” scene at the end is nothing short of haunting.

What I really wish Luhrmann would have done, though, is to treat Elvis’ life in a more radical, stylized, Baz-tastic way. He could have turned “Jailhouse Rock” (a key moment for Elvis, though it isn’t even in the movie) into a show-stopping epiphany, and if the Elvis-the-pelvis-introduces-sex-to-America revolution of 1956 had been staged as less of a TV-biopic news-flash montage, complete with fake scandals (as if the real ones weren’t vivid enough), and as more of a delirious musical number, the songs could have been taken to a new level. It might even have felt like we hadn’t heard them before. Instead, Elvis’s music, right up until the Vegas section, gets blended into a kind of Elvis Presley smoothie.

If it sounds like I’m asking “Elvis” to be a different kind of movie than it is — well, I am. But here’s the thing: Lurhmann already eased down the rabbit hole of that kind of movie when he turned Col. Parker into a demonically accented, twinkly-eyed scamp of betrayal. Hanks has been unfairly savaged for his performance, which is a knowing piece of operatic villainy. But if that’s how you’re going to go, why not shoot the works? If “Elvis” had been a psychedelic rock dream play, like “Moulin Rouge!” with the King at its center, it might have been even more of a must-see. As it is, the movie, while eminently worth seeing, is caught between a rock biopic and a Baz place.

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“Elvis” brings all of the glitz, rhinestones, and jumpsuits you’d expect in an Elvis film, but without the necessary complexity for a movie from 2022 about the “King.”

Maximalist filmmaker Baz Luhrmann , who abhors visual restraint and instead opts for grand theatricality, should be the perfect creator for a Presley biopic, but isn’t. Luhrmann tells us this icon’s story from the perspective of the singer’s longtime, crooked manager Colonel Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ). After collapsing in his tacky, memorabilia-filled office, a near-death Parker awakens alone in a Las Vegas hospital room. The papers have labeled him a crook, a cheat who took advantage of Elvis ( Austin Butler ), so he must set the record straight. 

From the jump, Luhrmann’s aesthetic language takes hold: An IV-drip turns into the Las Vegas skyline; in a hospital nightgown, Parker walks through a casino until he arrives at a roulette wheel. Carrying a heap of affectations, Hanks plays Parker like the Mouse King in “ The Nutcracker .” For precisely the film’s first half hour, “Elvis” moves like a Christmas fairytale turned nightmare; one fueled not by jealousy but the pernicious clutches of capitalism and racism, and the potent mixture they create. 

It’s difficult to wholly explain why “Elvis” doesn’t work, especially because for long stretches it offers rushes of enthralling entertainment. In the early goings-on, Luhrmann and co-writers Sam Bromell , Craig Pearce , and Jeremy Doner meticulously build around Presley’s influences. They explain how Gospel and Blues equally enraptured him—a well-edited, both visually and sonically, sequence mixes the two genres through a sweaty performance of “That’s Alright Mama”—and they also show how much his time visiting on Beale Street informed his style and sound. A performance of “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton ( Shonka Dukureh ), and the emergence of a flashy B.B. King ( Kelvin Harrison Jr.) furthers the point. Presley loves the superhero Shazam, and dreams about reaching the Rock of Eternity, a stand-in for stardom in this case. He’s also a momma’s boy (thankfully Luhrmann doesn’t belabor the death of Elvis’ brother, a biographical fact lampooned by “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”).  

Though a biopic veteran, Hanks has rarely been a transformative actor. In this case, you can hear his accent slipping back toward Hanks. And the heavy prosthetics do him few favors, robbing him of his facial range—an underrated tool in his repertoire. And Hanks already struggles to play outright villains; shaping the story from his perspective takes the edge off of his potential menace. It’s a tough line for Hanks to walk, to be unsuspecting yet vicious. Hanks creates a friction that doesn’t altogether work, but feels at home in Luhrmann’s heavy reliance on artifice. 

The most fascinating linkage in “Elvis” is the extrapolation of commerce and race. Parker is enamored by Presley because he plays Black music but is white. Elvis turns off the white Christian old, like the moribund country singer Hank Snow ( David Wenham ), and the homophobic men who consider him a “fairy.” Yet he excites the young, like Jimmie Rogers ( Kodi Smit-McPhee , both actors provide fantastic comic relief), and he has sex appeal. A wiggle, if you please. Luhrmann takes that wiggle seriously, showing sexually possessed, screaming women. Butler’s crotch, in precisely fitted pink pants and shot in close-up, vibrates. Harsh zooms, quick whip pans, and a taste for horniness (by both men and women) help make the early moments of this biopic so special. As does its anti-capitalist bent, which depicts how often labor, art, and ownership can be spit out and garbled in the destructive system.    

Unfortunately, “Elvis” soon slips into staid biopic territory. We see the meteoric rise of Presley, the mistakes—whether by greed or naïveté—he makes along the way, and his ultimate descent toward self-parody. His mother ( Helen Thomson ) dies on the most hackneyed of beats. His father ( Richard Roxburgh ) quivers in the shallowest of ways. Priscilla ( Olivia DeJonge ) appears and is handed standard tragic wife material. The pacing slows, and the story just doesn’t offer enough playfulness or interiority to keep up. 

But even so, the latter portions of Luhrmann’s film aren’t without its pleasures: The performance of “Trouble,” whereby Presley defies the Southern racists who fear his Black-infused music (and sensuality) will infiltrate white America, is arresting. Cinematographer Mandy Walker ’s freeze frames imitate black and white photography, like wrapping history in the morning dew. The performance of Elvis’ comeback special, specifically his rendition of “If I Can Dream” soars. During the Vegas sequences, the costumes become ever more elaborate, the make-up ever more garish, acutely demonstrating Presley’s physical decline. And Butler, an unlikely Elvis, tightly grips the reins by providing one show-stopping note after another. There isn’t a hint of fakery in anything Butler does. That sincerity uplifts “Elvis” even as it tumbles.    

But all too often the film slips into a great white hope syndrome, whereby Presley is the sincere white hero unearthing the exotic and sensual Black artists of his era. B.B. King, Big Momma Thornton, and Little Richard (real-life supporters of Presley) exist solely as either bulletin board cheerleaders or alluring beings from a far-off land. While these Black artists are championed—an awareness by Luhrmann of their importance and the long and winding history of Black art moving through white spaces—they barely speak or retain any depth, even while a paternalistic Presley advances their cause. 

The approach neither illuminates nor dignifies these figures. Instead, Luhrmann tries to smooth over the complicated feelings many Black folks of varied generations have toward the purported King. In that smoothing, Presley loses enough danger, enough fascinating complications to render the whole enterprise predictable. Because it’s not enough to merely have awareness, a filmmaker also has a responsibility to question whether they’re the right person to tell a story. Luhrmann isn’t. And that’s a failing that will be difficult for many viewers to ignore.

Luhrmann side-steps other parts of the Elvis mythology, including the age gap between Priscilla and Presley (the pair met in Germany when the former was 14 years old), and when Elvis became a stooge for Richard Nixon . Excluding the latter makes little sense in a movie concerning the commodification of Presley by capitalism and conservatism. Luhrmann wants to show the downfall of a doe-eyed icon by nefarious systems, but never pushes the envelope enough for him to become unlikable, or better yet, intricate and human. 

That flattening easily arises from telling this story from Colonel Parker’s perspective. He doesn’t care about Black people, therefore, they exist as cardboard cutouts. He cares little for Priscilla, therefore, she has little personhood. And Parker certainly isn’t going to tarnish the image or brand of Elvis because it corrodes himself. These undesirable outcomes, facile and pointless, make logical sense considering the framing of the narrative. But what good is making a sanitized Elvis biopic in 2022? And truly, who really needs a further fortification of Presley’s cultural importance when it’s been the dominant strain for over 60 years? It’s another noxious draft in history clumsily written by white hands.

“Elvis” certainly works as a jukebox, and it does deliver exactly what you’d expect from a Luhrmann movie. But it never gets close to Presley; it never deals with the knotty man inside the jumpsuit; it never grapples with the complications in his legacy. It’s overstuffed, bloated, and succumbs to trite biopic decisions. Luhrmann always puts Butler in the best position to succeed until the credits, whereby he cuts to archival footage of Presley singing “Unchained Melody.” In that moment Luhrmann reminds you of the myth-making at play. Which is maybe a good thing, given Luhrmann’s misleading, plasticine approach. 

Now playing in theaters.

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

• Austin Butler as Elvis Presley
• Dacre Montgomery as Steve Binder
• Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker
• Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla Presley
• Kelvin Harrison Jr. as B.B. King
• Richard Roxburgh as Vernon Presley
• Helen Thomson as Gladys Presley
• Yola as Sister Rosetta Tharpe
• David Wenham as Hank Snow
• Luke Bracey as Jerry Schilling
• Alex Radu as George Klein
• Alton Mason as Little Richard
• Xavier Samuel as Scotty Moore
• Kodi Smit-McPhee as Jimmie Rodgers Snow
• Natasha Bassett as Dixie Locke
• Leon Ford as Tom Diskin
• Baz Luhrmann

Writer (story by)

• Jeremy Doner
• Craig Pearce
• Sam Bromell
• Elliott Wheeler
• Jonathan Redmond

Cinematographer

• Mandy Walker

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• Baz Luhrmann’s <i>Elvis</i> Is an Exhilarating, Maddening Spectacle—But One Made With Love

Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Is an Exhilarating, Maddening Spectacle—But One Made With Love

B az Luhrmann’s movies—even the great ones, like his 1996 Shakespeare-via- Tiger Beat romance Romeo + Juliet , or The Great Gatsby, from 2013, a fringed shimmy of decadence and loneliness—are loathed by many for what they see as the director’s garishness, his adoration of spectacle, his penchant for headache-inducing, mincemeat-and-glitter editing. But in 2022, in a culture where long-form series storytelling reigns supreme, Luhrmann’s devotion to two-and-a-half-hour bursts of excess is pleasingly old-fashioned, like a confetti blast from a cannon at a county fair. It’s true that his movies don’t always work, or rarely work all the way though, and that’s certainly the case with Elvis, his sequined jumpsuit of a biopic playing out of competition at the 75th Cannes Film Festival . At times it’s barely a movie—the first hour or so is exceptionally fragmented and frenetic, as if Luhrmann were time-traveling through a holographic rendering of Elvis Presley’s life, dipping and darting through the significant events with little time to touch down. But through all the arty overindulgences, one truth shines through: Luhrmann loves Elvis so much it hurts. And in a world where there’s always, supposedly, a constant stream of new things to love, or at least to binge-watch, love of Elvis—our American pauper king with a cloth-of-gold voice—feels like a truly pure thing.

Luhrmann and his co-writers Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner use the story of Elvis’ supremely crooked manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks, lurking beneath prosthetic jowls), to frame the larger, more glorious and more tragic story of Elvis. Though he was born in Tupelo, Mississippi—his identical twin, Jesse Garon, died at birth— Elvis grew up poor in Memphis, adoring and being adored by his mother, Gladys (Helen Thomson). Luhrmann shows us Elvis as a preadolescent, splitting his time between a juke joint and a revival tent down the road. (Too young to get into the former, he could only peer through a crack in the wall, entranced by the Black blues guys performing inside.) These are the twin poles of young Elvis’ life, the foundation for all that came after, and Luhrmann connects them in one extremely stylized shot: in Elvis world, gospel and blues are literally connected by one dirt road. This junior version of Elvis goes back and forth freely, drinking deeply from one well before moving to the other, and back again.

His rise happens quickly, and before you know it, he’s become the Elvis we know, or the one we think we know: he’s played by Austin Butler, who goes beyond merely replicating Elvis’ signature moves (though he’s terrific at that); he seems to be striving to conjure some phantasmal fingerprint. For long stretches of the movie, Butler’s Elvis doesn’t really have many lines: we see him, in his pre-fame years, jumping out of the truck he drives for a living and walking down a Memphis street, swinging a guitar in one hand a lunchbox in the other. Did the real-life Elvis actually do this? Doubtful. But isn’t it exactly what you want to see in a movie?

Read more reviews by Stephanie Zacharek

Before long, our movie Elvis has landed a slot performing on the Louisiana Hayride, and Sam Phillips over at Sun Studios—who specializes in “race records,” music made by Black performers—takes a chance on him at the behest of his assistant, Marion Keisker, who hears something in the kid. Elvis cuts a record. Then he’s jiggling onstage in a loose pink suit, its supple fabric hiding more than it reveals, but even so, the world gets a hint at the secrets contained therein. The girls, and most of the boys, too, go nuts.

Butler conjures the guilelessness of Elvis’ face, his soft yet chiseled cheekbones, the look in his eyes that says, “I’m up for anything—are you?” He and Luhrmann hop through the major events of Presley’s life, sometimes going for long stretches without taking a breath. Elvis is exhausting, a mess; it’s also exhilarating, a crazy blur you can’t look away from. (Catherine Martin’s costume and production design is, as always, exemplary—period-perfect but also brushed with imaginative flourishes.) We see Elvis shopping at his beloved Lansky Brothers, lured in because one of his favorite musicians, B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) shops there. We see him succumbing to the dangerous manipulations of Colonel Parker, and later kicking against them, most notably as he mounts his 1968 comeback special. (He was supposed to put on a garish Christmas sweater and sing some piece of holiday dreck, not become the stuff of legend in a black leather suit that, you just know, would be hot to the touch if only you could get close enough to it.)

But as we know, Elvis loses that fight. Colonel Parker sends a quack known as Dr. Nick to pump him full of drugs, to keep him on his feet even as he’s going out of his mind. The tragedy escalates. Does Luhrmann show us the real Elvis, or is he just re-embroidering the Elvis who already lives in our imagination? The answer seems to be that Luhrmann sees equal value in fact and myth. Though Elvis more or less follows the facts as we know them, there are moments of invention that are piercing. When Elvis’ long-suffering wife Priscilla (played by Olivia DeJonge ) finally leaves him, he chases after her, rushing down the staircase at Graceland in pants and a purple robe, a drugged-out mess. She can’t take it anymore; she’s got to leave, and she’s taking little Lisa Marie with her. Elvis stands there in bare feet, begging her not to go. And when he realizes he can’t stop her, he says, more in defeat than in hopefulness, “When you’re 40 and I’m 50, we’ll be back together—you’ll see.” Even if Elvis never really uttered that line, its map of romantic longing had long been written in his voice. In Elvis, when Butler sings, it’s Elvis’ voice that streams out, in lustrous ribbons of recklessness, of ardor, of hope for the future. That voice is a repository of every joy and misery that life could possibly hold.

Read More: He’ll Always Be Elvis: Remembering the ‘King’ 40 Years On

When the trailer for Elvis was released, a few months back, the responses on social media, and among people I know, ranged from “That looks unhinged! I’m dying to see it!” to “I can’t even look at that thing,” to “What accent, exactly, is Tom Hanks trying to achieve?” (The movie, incidentally, explains the unidentifiable diction of this man without a country, and probably without a soul.) In the movie’s last moments, Luhrmann recreates one of the saddest Elvis remnants, a live performance of “Unchained Melody” from June of 1977, just two months before his death. Butler, his face puffed out with prosthetics, sits at a grand piano littered with Coca Cola cups and a discarded terrycloth towel or two. The song, a swallow’s swoop of longing, begins pouring out of Elvis’s wrecked body—but as we watch, Luhrmann pulls a mystical switch, and footage of the real Elvis replaces the magnificent Butler-as-Elvis doppelgänger we’ve been watching. For a few confusing moments, the real Elvis is no longer a ghost—he has returned to us, an actor playing himself, and we see that as good as that Butler kid was, there’s no comparison to the real thing.

But the feeling of relief is fleeting. Elvis , now gone for more than 40 years, is a ghost, no matter how passionately Luhrmann and Butler have tried to reconstitute his ectoplasm. The only consolation is that when a person is no longer a person, he is at last free to become a dream. In the final moments of Elvis, Luhrmann returns his beloved subject to that world, like a fisherman freeing his catch. “Lonely rivers flow/to the sea, to the sea,” the song tells us, as the true Elvis swims back to his home of safety—he’s better off as a dream, maybe, safe from everyone who might hurt or use him. But for a few hours there, he seemed to walk among us once again, a sighting that no one would believe if we tried to tell them. But we saw him. We really did. And then he slipped away, having had enough of our claim over him, if never enough of our love.

Correction, July 5

The original version of this story misstated the film’s screenwriters; Jeremy Doner was omitted.

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Movie review: 'Elvis' rocks new life into the musician biopic

LOS ANGELES, June 22 (UPI) -- Elvis , in theaters Friday, is the Elvis Presley story told as Moulin Rouge . Director Baz Luhrmann uses his most flamboyant techniques to capture the energy of the flamboyant legend.

In 1997, Col. Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ), on his deathbed, reflects on the career of Presley (Austin Butler). Presumably, Parker is defending himself but the film is not sympathetic towards Presley's manager. Advertisement

The trailers for Elvis really hid how avant-garde Luhrmann's film is. In his Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge , Luhrmann used cinematography and editing to make Shakespeare and musicals edgy. He does the same for the stale musician biopic here.

Some of the more obvious techniques incorporate Las Vegas marquees, split screens and comic book panels. One sequence about Presley's post-army career is presented like a cheesy Elvis movie. Advertisement

It can be subtler, too. Elvis presents a recording studio as a vast cavern, which any recording artist can confirm is neither accurate nor practical. Meetings with Parker are portrayed as sinister board room meetings just by the lighting, the lenses and the angles chosen.

Hanks plays Parker as Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars . As hammy as that can be, it makes sense in the extreme nature of this story.

Parker manipulatively includes the whole Presley family in the business so they are just as entangled as the singer himself. Parker sells anti-Elvis memorabilia to show how he can profit even off hate. At one point, a cash register sound punctuates Parker's thought process, so subtlety is not part of this setlist.

Butler has the moves and the film captures the sexual energy his gyrations provoked. It's over the top in the film, but the sensuality is honest. Men's lust for Presley is treated as just as valid as the fawning women, even if the men of the '50s couldn't express their interest as overtly as the women did.

The tonal shifts of Luhrmann's technique also capture how much time has passed. A major historic moment may have just happened 20 minutes ago, but so much has happened cinematically since then that the story feels vast. Advertisement

Presley's Steve Allen Show performance, 1968 comeback special and Las Vegas residency may be more well-known highlights of his story. Incorporated into this framework, it becomes clear when Presley needs a comeback, and when he feels burnt out.

If there are problematic aspects of Presley, Elvis is only concerned with the ones involving Parker. Elvis's courtship of Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) when she was 15 is not questioned, and the inspiration he took from African-American artists is presented positively.

There are plenty of other accounts of those aspects of Presley's life for those who want to interrogate them. Omitting them is also consistent with the notion that this is Parker's version, because he absolutely would have buried those questions.

Even in this context, Priscilla could be more involved. She seems like a supportive partner in business and marriage, but she doesn't get much screen time. It's still the Elvis movie, not the Priscilla movie.

As many iconic and notorious Presley moments as Elvis includes, it still doesn't cover everything, even at over two and a half hours. The film touches on his pill addiction and negotiations for A Star Is Born, but there are no peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Advertisement

That is to say, even the casual Elvis fan can recognize that this is not the definitive Elvis movie. It may be the closest a movie can come to what it felt like to be Elvis Presley, though.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001 and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012. Read more of his work in Entertainment.

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• Baz Luhrmann
• Steve Allen

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Parents' guide to.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 27 Reviews
• Kids Say 35 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Snazzy music biopic doesn't go deep enough; drugs, smoking.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Elvis is writer-director Baz Luhrmann's visually stylish musical biopic about The King of Rock 'n' Roll. As told through the perspective of Elvis' longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), it spends a lot of time on Presley's (Austin Butler) launch into superstardom, the…

Why Age 13+?

Death threats/aggressive fans. A concert riot shows chaos and police hitting ind

Language includes: "goddamn," "hell," "a--hole," "s--t," "sons of bitches," "bas

Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Cadillac are seen and referenced on several occasions. Sun

Pill-popping, morphine use, and needles -- as well as an enabling doctor -- are

Kissing. Sensual dancing. Sex is implied through images of women in lingerie on

Any Positive Content?

When you find something that inspires you, it can change your life. Be careful a

The Black musicians who influenced Elvis make many appearances in the supporting

As depicted here, Elvis Presley was a well-meaning person who cared very much ab

Violence & Scariness

Death threats/aggressive fans. A concert riot shows chaos and police hitting individuals with batons. Elvis has several guns and shoots one while in an altered state. The assassinations of historical leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sharon Tate are referenced, and TV news footage of Robert Kennedy's murder is shown. Medical emergencies/collapses.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes: "goddamn," "hell," "a--hole," "s--t," "sons of bitches," "bastard," and one "f--k." Insults include "bloodsucking old vampire" and "toad." "Fairy" used as a slur. Racist terms like "animalistic" and "voodoo devil music" are used to describe Elvis' dance moves and music, which were rooted in Black culture. "Negro" and "colored" are used.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Cadillac are seen and referenced on several occasions. Sun Records, RCA, NBC mentioned. Wonder Bread, Skippy, Saltines seen. Elvis lived lavishly and became a brand unto himself.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Pill-popping, morphine use, and needles -- as well as an enabling doctor -- are shown and discussed. It all leads to Elvis' drug dependency and is all portrayed negatively. Alcoholism is depicted through a character drinking vodka and beer; it winds up leading to her demise. Other characters also drink, and people smoke cigars, cigarettes, and a pipe.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Kissing. Sensual dancing. Sex is implied through images of women in lingerie on a bed and shoes on the ground. Some skimpy costumes. Elvis' wiggling/gyrations during his performances upset authorities and parents because it resulted in girls (and women and some men/boys) feeling sexual urges ... and throwing underwear on stage. He's referred to as "Elvis the Pelvis." Marriage and infidelity are part of the plot.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

When you find something that inspires you, it can change your life. Be careful about who you trust. Art and music are very powerful.

Diverse Representations

The Black musicians who influenced Elvis make many appearances in the supporting cast -- as does their struggle to achieve mainstream notice despite having immense talent. Elvis finds his way to music through a religious experience at a Black church and is depicted as feeling most at home among the Black folks he grew up alongside. Female characters are portrayed with compassion and some nuance, but they're all primarily seen through their relationship to Elvis (mother, girlfriend, wife). Young Elvis is called "fairy" because he wears eye makeup and bright colors, but this is portrayed negatively. In early scenes, Col. Tom Parker's carnival includes some stereotypically depicted "freaks."

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Positive Role Models

As depicted here, Elvis Presley was a well-meaning person who cared very much about those he loved and didn't let racism impact who he was or who he spent time with. He's a devoted son who treats those around him with respect. But drug abuse and unrelenting expectations eventually destroy him. He cheats while in committed relationships, falls under the sway of Col. Tom Parker, and suffers from self doubt. Parker is portrayed as a selfish, manipulative puppet master who didn't really care about anything other than himself. Priscilla is shown as smart and caring.

Parents need to know that Elvis is writer-director Baz Luhrmann 's visually stylish musical biopic about The King of Rock 'n' Roll. As told through the perspective of Elvis' longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ), it spends a lot of time on Presley's ( Austin Butler ) launch into superstardom, the business side of his time in the spotlight, and his Vegas residency in his later years. Much of the rest of his life is breezed through, including his marriage to Priscilla ( Olivia DeJonge ) and his time in Hollywood. Teens may be surprised to learn that authorities found Elvis' dance moves obscene; the movie also shows the racist attitudes of the 1950s and '60s. Vices of all kinds -- drinking, smoking, spending, gambling, and drug use -- bring different characters suffering and misfortune. Sex is suggested with shots of passionate kissing and lingerie-clad women in bed, and Priscilla walks around in a short nightie, revealing her butt cheeks. Elvis owns several guns and wields one while in an altered state; there's also a riot at a concert, some medical emergencies, mourning, and footage of historical assassinations. Language includes "goddamn," "hell," "s--t," and one instance of "f--k." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (27)
• Kids say (35)

Based on 27 parent reviews

Awful cussing ruined my idea of elvis

What's the story.

Through the perspective of Elvis Presley's longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ), ELVIS explores how a boy from Tupelo, Miss., became the most successful singer of all time. Navigating the difficulties of a rapidly changing world, former carnival worker Parker reinvents Presley ( Austin Butler ) to keep him on top, but it comes at great personal, financial, and professional cost to the musician.

Is It Any Good?

Trying to tell the life story of the biggest global superstar of all time in one sitting is challenging, if not unwise. Turning what could've been a trilogy into one film, it's almost as if writer/director Baz Luhrmann is asking, what if a whole movie was a montage? Elvis whips through major events in Presley's life, all clipped as tightly as if they were in a music video. For an artist whose ascent to success was a whirlwind, perhaps it was an artistic choice to depict it in a similar way to the audience. But then, when the party stops for Elvis, so does the action, and Luhrmann abruptly turns to traditional biopic storytelling as Elvis mounts his 1968 comeback. By that time, though, viewers' brains may be so hyperstimulated that the abrupt switch will make the rest of the movie's long running time feel unnecessarily slow.

Plus, telling the story through Parker's eyes creates a barrier to getting to know Presley. The musical powerhouse is infantilized, and the movie suggests that Parker's manipulations led to the demise of both Elvis and his beloved mother, Gladys (Helen Thomson). And Priscilla Presley ( Olivia DeJonge ) is portrayed more like a minor character than as the love of Elvis' life. Here, it feels like Elvis' real marriage was his partnership with Parker. Is this how Elvis would tell his story? It's hard to say, because after 2 1/2 hours, the superstar remains enigmatic, and too much is left unexplained. Still, Butler's performance is mesmerizing, the soundtrack is electric (many of Presley's songs are mixed in with those by other historically significant musicians, and the soundtrack includes plenty of modern tunes), and the idea that Elvis' lower-body wiggling was actually illegal is hysterical. Most of the central characters develop destructive habits -- but drugs, drinking, smoking, and gambling are never made to look fun, just a portal to misery. As an Elvis biopic, Elvis lacks. But as an exciting way for teens to get a taste of how "the good ol' days" weren't as "good" as some want to remember, it's ideal.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about prejudice. How does Elvis make the case that the objections to Presley's dance moves were based in racism? How does the movie suggest that White musicians' role in the advent of rock 'n' roll was cultural appropriation?

Do you agree with Col. Tom Parker's statement: "It doesn't matter if you do 10 stupid things, as long as you do one right"?

Is substance use glamorized ? Are there realistic consequences? Why does that matter?

How accurate do you think the film is to the actual events of Presley's life? Why might filmmakers choose to alter the facts in movies based on true stories?

How does this movie compare to other biopics you've seen? Do you like the mix of modern music with Presley's classics?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 13, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : August 9, 2022
• Cast : Austin Butler , Tom Hanks , Olivia DeJonge
• Director : Baz Luhrmann
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Warner Brothers
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History , Music and Sing-Along
• Run time : 159 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking
• Awards : BAFTA - BAFTA Winner , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner
• Last updated : June 20, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Screen Rant

Every elvis presley film ranked from worst to best.

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The legendary King of Rock & Roll  Elvis Presley starred in over 30 feature films during his career, movies that range from formulaic melodramas to show-stopping extravaganzas. Presley jumped headfirst into Hollywood out of a desire to be a dramatic actor, like idols Marlon Brando and James Dean. The quality of Elvis' movies varies because of his eventual disenchantment with the industry.

Elvis Presley's fame skyrocketed after he began singing with the Sun Records label in Memphis in 1954, earning his memorable popularity only two years later. Since one of Elvis' biggest aspirations was to be remembered like Brando or Dean, his agent Colonel Tom Parker (recently played by Tom Hanks in Baz Luhrmann's  Elvis biopic) wangled an audition for him in The Rainmaker. Presley didn't pass the screen test but signed a contract with Paramount that jumpstarted his career in Hollywood. He referred to Sinatra when he discussed why he wanted to be an actor as well as a singer. He stated in Life Magazine, "I want to become a good actor because you can't build a whole career on just singing. Look at Frank Sinatra. Until he added acting to singing, he found himself slipping downhill"  (via The Guardian ). Despite that, Elvis has gone down in history for his seminal music and choreography. Though critics majorly considered his movies unoriginal, Elvis' onscreen performances were acclaimed.

Related: Every Cary Grant Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Critics regard Elvis Presley's early career in Hollywood as his most refined since the late 1960s showed a decline in quality. Elvis outspokenly grew tired of acting in romantic comedies since he went to Hollywood to become known as a renowned dramatic actor. His performances suffered from his disappointment with the studios producing his films. Elvis jumped into documentary filmmaking after his final feature film appearance in director William A. Graham's Change of Habit.  He considered Clambake his worst film, but a couple of his other films may actually trump that musical's mediocrity. Nonetheless, here's every Elvis movie, ranked from worst to best.

31. Kissin' Cousins (1964)

Though Elvis claims Clambake is his worst film, Kissin' Cousins paints a clearer picture of the quality drop his films began to take in the mid-1960s. Directed by Gene Nelson (who branched out to direct episodes of  popular series such as Star Trek  and Gilligan's Island ), Kissin' Cousins centers around a plan by the U.S. government to build a missile launch facility in Tennessee's mountains. The plan is thwarted by the country folk who live there. Presley playing two characters, cousins that are foils of each other, is a surprisingly fun quirk of the film, but it suffers from an overcomplicated plot that confuses the overall cheesy tone. Critics note that the musical aspect of the film feels devastatingly out of place for an Elvis movie.

30. Stay Away, Joe (1968)

Stay Away, Joe fails to exude any meaningful message amid its mean-spirited portrayal of Native American culture. Peter Tewksbury's film revolves around Joe Lightcloud (Presley) returning to his reservation in the American Southwest with a brilliant idea to save his tribe from poverty. This entry represents the offensive nature of many  problematic Old Hollywood movies  due to its utilization of Red Face. This makes the film a hard watch regardless of its narrative perks. An upside to Stay Away, Joe is that it's shot on location in Arizona and shows off the state's more beautiful rural areas. Elvis' charming performance is well-regarded by critics but the movie's flat music and comedy don't help it stand out beyond that.

29. Clambake (1967)

Clambake may be Elvis' least favorite film he starred in but it isn't altogether dismissible. The story follows the heir of an oil company, Scott (Presley), and his ambition to escape his overly privileged lifestyle. When he swaps identities with a ski instructor, he falls in love with a woman in need of money. While the film captures the charm of the life-swapping formula, better seen in Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd , Elvis' disconnect from the film's purpose is apparent. The story is harmless and upbeat enough for the film to sail towards a proper conclusion, but the critical consensus is that Clambake  is void of energy. Along with Elvis' lackluster performance, the movie blatantly overuses rear-screen projection.

Related: Every Mads Mikkelsen Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

28. Live A Little, Love A Little (1968)

Director Norman Taurog's musical rom-com Live a Little, Love a Little depicts the struggle of a working-class photographer named Greg (Presley) as he balances two jobs and the burgeoning love of a troubled young woman, Bernice. Though the film was critically reviewed as the epitome of mediocrity, Live a Little, Love a Little possesses sharp potential in instances where the romance doesn't drive the script. Bernice's overbearing pursuit of Greg's affections ages the movie poorly. Its debut of Elvis' infamous song  "A Little Less Conversation" does elevate the film substantially, however.

27. It Happened At The World's Fair (1963)

It Happened At The World's Fair is another musical comedy starring Elvis Presley directed by Norman Taurog. After losing his plane in a gambling bet gone wrong, crop duster Mike (Presley) and his partner head off to Seattle's World Fair in hopes of changing their financial situation. Distraction awaits them as Mike helps a child find her uncle and becomes smitten with a nurse he meets. There are hints of Elvis' genuine talent for delivering dramatic performances sprinkled throughout this overelaborate web of plot points. The atmosphere and music are memorable enough but the overall movie, in the words of the 1963 New York Times review, feels like a  "dismal parody of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals of old."

26. Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966)

Elvis Presley's animated performance is delightful in director Michael D. Moore's Paradise, Hawaiian Style . Presley plays Rick who is a dangerously flirtatious helicopter pilot looking to kickstart a helicopter charter business with his friend. This film falls into the formulaic rut many of Presley's late 1960s films do but manages to save itself with stunning cinematography. The innovative aerial photography was superb for its time, making  Parade, Hawaiian Style a visually captivating watch. The plot is hardly fleshed out, yet Elvis' suave demeanor makes up for the lacking narrative.

25. Fun In Acapulco (1963)

Elvis plays a debonair lifeguard who overcomes his fear of heights in director Richard Thorpe's Fun in Acapulco. Another of Presley's films shot on location, the scenic shots of Acapulco elevate this whimsical, yet empty musical. Despite the underdeveloped dynamics, between both Presley's love interest and antagonist, Elvis is at his most talented here. The critical response to  Elvis' performance was rightfully positive , as he proves in this musical that he can execute a balance between drama, romance, and comedy perfectly. If Fun in Acapulco's  rudimentary script had given him more room to develop his dramatic performance, the film could have been his gateway into more serious cinema.

Related: Every Hugh Dancy Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

24. Harum Scarum (1965)

Harum Scarum is a film that contains a more interesting background than its content. Presley plays a popular actor, Johnny Tyrone, who gets kidnapped in the Middle East because his onscreen adventurous persona is taken seriously by his captors who need someone to assassinate their king. The over-the-top plot works well for a peppy musical and, despite the film's narrative downsides, its concept assures that Harum Scarum is never boring. Presley's performance is often jarring due to  Elvis' real-life confusion about the movie's tone. The film is shot on the set of the silent epic The King of Kings. It gives the film its vintage and nostalgic qualities but also obstructs the story from feeling grounded when it needs to be.

23. Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962)

Girls! Girls! Girls! is a musical comedy filled with the mischievous and jazzy energy lacking from Elvis' later filmography. He plays a boyishly endearing sailor who finds himself caught up in a tense love triangle with two very different women. Variety 's review for Girls! Girls! Girls!  points out the film's main perk is that it jumps back into a "non-dramatic, purely escapist light."  The major setback to this movie is that it doesn't stand out amongst Elvis' many other underdeveloped rom coms. The film greatly features one of Elvis' most beloved songs , "Return to Sender," however.

22. Tickle Me (1965)

Tickle Me finds Elvis at the rodeo playing a swashbuckling cowboy who discovers a treasure map with his love interest Pam (Jocelyn Lane). Presley excels in his returning role as Hollywood's heartthrob and creates a jovial atmosphere with his character's consistently flirtatious demeanor. A common issue amongst his late 1960s films is their mediocrity which Tickle Me, unfortunately, doesn't escape from. The plot is predictable and even Elvis' palpable chemistry with the actresses doesn't breathe life into his onscreen romances. It was not well-received critically due to its static cinematography and tacky set and costume design. That being said, Elvis' excitable persona as a rustic playboy makes the film sufficiently enjoyable.

21. Easy Come, Easy Go (1967)

Star-studded with infamous TV actors and a surprise appearance from acclaimed actor Mickey Rooney , prior to his breakout, Easy Come, Easy Go earns much of its charm from the dedicated cast and crew. The film follows the journey of a U.S. Navy officer (Presley) who decides to swim down to a sunken ship to retrieve a fortune of gold stashed there. The plot is adventurous, though it feels rushed in places. Presley shines in the cast as a perfect foil to his character's love interest but his soundtrack for the film falls flat. It may be because Easy Come, Easy Go's  soundtrack is the first not to include a ballad.

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20. Speedway (1968)

Elvis Presley stars alongside Nancy Sinatra in Norman Taurog's Speedway. Stock car racer Steve (Presley) enters several races to gamble for enough money to keep his friend Kenny out of jail, falling in love with a revenue agent named Susan (Sinatra) along the way. Frank Sinatra's daughter, Nancy Sinatra's last film role is an upbeat and bombastic one, though she shares very little chemistry with Elvis. This movie was panned by critics as "too much of an imitation of too many of his previous movies"  in the Los Angeles Times. Despite its repetition, Elvis particularly shines when playing a flirtatious city slicker.

19. Girl Happy (1965)

Girl Happy centers around a young woman named Valerie (Shelley Fabares) who is being tailed during her spring vacation by the singer Rusty Wells (Presley) because her father paid him to watch out for her. He falls in love with her and must help her avoid her father's control. The music in this romantic comedy makes each scene pop, namely when the classic song Puppet on a String is featured.  Elvis' character is a variation of his stage persona which makes this musical more interesting than it would be without him. The story is solid and its characters are fleshed out enough that Girl Happy can be considered a plentiful experience, if not the final remnant of Presley's ambitious vitality in his late 1960s films.

18. Change Of Habit (1969)

Change of Habit was Elvis Presley's final time performing in a feature film. He plays a doctor who runs a private hospital in a low-income district and falls in love with one of the nuns working under his employ. Though it holds a 10 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the worst-rated Presley film on the site, Change of Habit excels in many places. While Elvis did dabble in dramatic performance throughout his film career, this may be the first one delivered unironically and untouched by his provocative on-stage persona. Actress Mary Tyler Moore's  commitment to the serious nature of the narrative mixed well with Elvis' soft-spoken charisma. While it isn't perfect, it's a serviceable script for Elvis' last acting role.

17. Double Trouble (1967)

After a string of bland films leading up to 1967, Presley's twenty-fourth feature Double Trouble shocked critics with its vivacity and originality. Elvis' cheeky character Guy Lambert attempts to court an aristocratic woman named Jill before getting swept up in a British jewel heist. The film's adventurous boldness often gets swept under the rug in favor of Norman Taurog's more refined projects, but Double Trouble's exciting story overpowers its loose plot threads. The biggest perk of the movie is the album Elvis recorded to pair with it, containing several of his most underrated and spirited songs. He elevates an otherwise forgettable heist film with both his music and mojo.

Related: Every Baz Luhrmann Movie Ranked From Worst To Best (Including Elvis)

16. Blue Hawaii (1961)

Directed by Hal B. Wallis, Blue Hawaii follows military man Chadwick's (Presley) return to Hawaii after his discharge. He meets his enchanting love interest Maile when he starts working as a tour guide on the island, which stirs up conflict in his uptight family. It's apparent Blue Hawaii kickstarted a trend for Elvis to star in beach musicals due to its pleasant vibrant colors and intricate location filming. The New York Times reviewed the film to critique its "blandly uneventful" content, a part of the larger disdain critics hold for this film. However, it captures Elvis Presley in the prime of his acting career . His optimism and passion for performance ooze from the screen, contagious enough to drown out the clichés and imitative narrative.

15. Spinout (1966)

Much like Speedway , racecars and rock music are the meat of Norman Taurog's Spinout. Rock singer Mike (Presley) finds himself being fought for by three women who desperately wish for him to be their husband. The problem is that Mike refuses to commit. While it's usually the romances and the music that stands out in Presley films, the humor in Spinout is what makes it an enjoyable ride. It was well-received critically, especially for the comedy Elvis was able to deliver in a way that felt improvised. The movie doesn't take many risks, but it is both a likable and lyrical experience.

14. Charro! (1969)

Elvis doesn't sing onscreen in  Charro!  and it is the only film out of his 31 where he doesn't. The classic song plays over the opening credits, but the western is likely barren of his regular numbers because Hollywood wanted Charro! to be more serious than his other films. The movie falls into the trappings of Clint Eastwood-style westerns with its thin dialogue and overlong action scenes. Critics looked poorly upon Charro! despite its box office success. Regardless, it is a novel experience to watch Elvis in a much darker role where he isn't relying on interruptive music to express himself.

13. Roustabout (1964)

Roustabout was directed by John Rich and revolves around Charlie (Presley), an unemployed singer who runs off to sing for a traveling circus. Performing diligently and charismatically alongside  film noir actress Barbara Stanwyck , Elvis proves he can muster up acting chops to match even the most experienced Hollywood stars. Roustabout earned a lukewarm response from critics at the time of its release but had incredible success at the box office. Elvis recorded his ninth and one of his most successful albums for this romance musical. Consisting of punchy hits like Poison Ivy League, the soundtrack picks up for where the film lacks in originality and audacity.

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12. Follow That Dream (1962)

Follow That Dream covers the story of a group of orphans and their guardians who decide to build a home on a Floridian beach. A government official attempts to move them off the property, but they refuse to budge. The movie was shot on location in Florida. The lush counties of Ocala and Yankeetown give the film a grounded and balmy atmosphere like Sean Baker's The Florida Project . The author of the book Follow That Dream  is adapted from did not prefer Elvis to be in the film but changed his mind once he saw how powerful his performance was as Toby, the independent son of Pop Kwimper. This feature is one of Presley's more above-average musical comedies due to its shockingly smart humor and hijinks

11. Frankie and Johnny (1966)

In Frankie and Johnny , Elvis Presley plays a singing gambler who works at a riverboat casino with his girlfriend in Missouri. After a fortuneteller implies he'll get lucky with a red-headed woman, his girlfriend becomes jealous and a love triangle is born. Elvis is outstandingly lively in this western comedy and uses his music to brighten an already vibrant setting. The major critical consensus was that Frankie and Johnny was a perfect vehicle for Elvis's music career, despite the uninspired narrative and his lack of chemistry with Donna Douglas. The true story of Elvis Presley's  upbringing in an impoverished sector of Mississippi is advantageous for this film and helps bring his character to life.

10. Wild In The Country (1961)

This feature is another Elvis adaptation of a critically acclaimed novel. Wild in the Country follows the story of Glenn (Presley), a troubled man who must go to counseling after instigating a huge fight with his brother. Rumors spread that Glenn is romantically involved with his counselor Irene (Hope Lange) and his reputation spins out of control. Critics deemed the film well-paced, but Elvis' performance was labeled "callow" by The New York Times . The script itself is genuinely dramatic and effective but Elvis' serious acting never gets a chance to shine against his musical scenes.

9. Loving You (1957)

Elvis Presley's first major role in a film was in director Hal Kenter's 1957 musical Loving You . Elvis' manager Colonel Tom Parker  nudged Paramount to expand the script which helped make this film Presley's first step into big starring roles in Hollywood. Critic and public opinion concurred that Elvis raised the bar with his engaging performance as Deke, a working-class man who is discovered for his musical talents and given the chance to become a star. Loving You has excellent direction for its romance and comedy. It is made even better by featuring classic Presley songs such as  (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear and, of course, Loving you. 

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8. The Trouble With Girls (1969)

Elvis confirmed in The Trouble With Girls that he could deliver a great performance in the final stretch of his Hollywood career. Elvis plays Walter, a manager of a troupe of entertainers who begins to fret that a union is being formed between his employees. It is fascinating to see Elvis Presley acting in a more enigmatic plot that focuses on subjects of murder, betrayal, and politics. Though the box office was poorer than expected, the film garnered a cult following especially during its release to drive-ins. The Trouble With Girls strikes a perfect balance between comedy and drama. Elvis proved, perhaps too late in his acting career, that he could successfully come across as daunting and dominant rather than as a purely guileless playboy.

7. Love Me Tender (1956)

Elvis' film debut was in Robert D. Webb's  Love Me Tender. The plot revolves around a group of confederate soldiers who decide to rob a Union train. It is the only feature film Elvis did not earn top billing. However, the infamous rock singer Elvis Presley's first acting performance stood out and proved to critics and audiences alike that he was deserving of bigger movie roles. The quintessential Presley song Love Me Tender transforms the film from a standard western film into a dreamy experience filled with romanticism. It isn't his best work but undeniably one of the most memorable ones.

6. Kid Galahad (1962)

One of Elvis' most critically acclaimed films is the reboot of  Kid Galahad, a boxing musical directed by Phil Karlson. The story follows Walter, a broke man who takes the job of a sparring partner to make money. The manager of the gym believes he will make a good fighter in the boxing ring and trains him. Despite critics hailing Elvis' acting as the best dramatic performance in his career, it was majorly accepted he was miscast as a boxer due to his lack of ferocity. Action film star Charles Bronson  and Elvis' other experienced co-stars have to do a lot of heavy lifting to make the story suspenseful. It's a well-executed remake but never quite meets the high bar the original film set.

5. Flaming Star (1960)

In Flaming Star, Elvis plays a man named Pacer Burton who lives on the Texas Frontier with his white father and Kiowa mother. Racial tension escalates when a group of racists prevents Burton's mother from getting medical treatment, causing her death. Flaming Star  offered Elvis an early start at his sought-after dramatic performances. His stormy onscreen chemistry with Steve Forrest, who plays Burton's brother, shows the steady improvement he was already making as an actor. Though the western's reception was wonderful, many critics had issues with the story's pacing.

Related: Every Live Network Musical, Ranked From Worst To Best

4. G.I. Blues (1960)

Elvis Presley's inspiring character Tulsa McLean in G.I. Blues has dreams of opening a nightclub after he leaves his station in West Germany. Presley was fresh out of his military career when he starred in the musical. His time enlisted gave him the demeanor and knowledge needed to portray an incredibly dynamic character. Critic reviews were mixed but the film was successful overall at the box office and with Elvis' fans. It was nominated for two Grammy awards due to its rhapsodic soundtrack. The music itself, namely the classic song "Blue Suede Shoes," is the component that truly breathes life into this military flick.

3. Jailhouse Rock (1957)

Director Richard Thorpe's musical drama Jailhouse Rock follows Vince Everett's (Presley) wrongful incarceration and the man he meets in prison who believes he has a future in the music industry. Jailhouse Rock is likely a more popular song than film, modernly covered in shows like Riverdale , but the song's timeless rhythm works in tandem with the film's crisp set design and plot structure to create a true Hollywood classic. It isn't seamless, with Presley's performance hinging on his stage persona, but the movie has rightfully been preserved by the National Film Registry for its undeniable influence on pop culture. It nonetheless received mixed reviews since Elvis' electric dancing style was still considered salacious and obscene at the time.

2. King Creole (1958)

According to Elvis Presley, Danny Fisher from  King Creole was his favorite role he ever played in the movies. Fisher jumps into a life of crime when he can't find a job but is soon discovered for his musical talents. Michael Curtiz's film exemplifies a perfect blend of genres. It serves perfectly as a Hollywood glamourized rom-com , a foot-stomping musical, and an empowering drama. Presley holds up well next to his experienced co-stars and manages to exude real humanity from his rebel character. Critics responded appreciably to King Creole which gave Elvis more traction to continue climbing that career ladder.

1. Viva Las Vegas (1964)

Director George Sidney's musical film Viva Las Vegas stars Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret as the lead romance. Lucky Jackson (Presley) goes to Vegas with the intention of winning enough money to buy a car that will help him win the Grand Prix. Instead, he meets a beautiful swim instructor (Margaret) who he quickly falls for. It turned out to be one of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer's most profitable investments  because of its incredible gross of over 9,000,000 dollars at the box office. Elvis and Ann-Margret's off-screen affair added to their incredible on-screen chemistry and is just one of the many reasons Viva Las Vegas has grown a cult following and become one of Elvis' most popular films. It has also been critically reviewed as possibly his best feature film. The movie can be considered lightning in a bottle since Sidney's vibrant and animated directing, Elvis Presley's sex appeal, and the enduring soundtrack work together to create a perfect experience in entertainment.

Related: Kurt Russell Made His Movie Debut Kicking Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley has left an undeniable mark on pop culture and in the music industry, but the period he shined as a movie star hasn't been forgotten. While director Baz Luhrmann's Elvis doesn't touch deeply on his Hollywood career, acting was one of Elvis' biggest passions and his feature films should be regarded for their worth then and now. This collection of films comprised every movie Elvis Presley starred in, ranked from worst to best.

Next: Elvis Proves Baz Luhrmann's Next Movie Will Be Even Better

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“Priscilla” Presents the Echoing Void of Elvis’s Fame

The new film from Sofia Coppola , “Priscilla,” begins in 1959. Sitting at the counter of a diner at a U.S. Army base in Germany, Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) is asked whether she likes Elvis Presley . She answers with a question: “Of course, who doesn’t?” Priscilla is petite, polite, and fourteen—a little older than Juliet was when she first bumped into Romeo. The exciting, if alarming, news is that Elvis, the most unattainable of stars, has swung into her orbit. He’s currently stationed nearby, serving in the military, and Priscilla is invited to meet him at a party. Romeo is right there in the room. “You’re just a baby,” Elvis tells her. “Thanks,” she replies.

Elvis is played by Jacob Elordi, who, by my estimate, is about three times taller than his co-star. As a result, the rapport between Elvis and Priscilla appears to be powered less by loving hearts than by simple hydraulics; he has to lean over and down as if hinged, like an industrial crane, for a word in her ear. (Later in the movie, she acquires a towering beehive, but that doesn’t really solve the problem. “Talk to the hair” is not something you say to Elvis Presley.) Nonetheless, the two of them fuse, sharing pangs of homesickness, and it’s not long before Elvis is introduced to Priscilla’s mother, Ann (Dagmara Dominczyk), and stepfather, Paul (Ari Cohen). “I happen to be very fond of your daughter,” Elvis reassures them. When he takes her out for the evening, Paul—a captain, and therefore Elvis’s superior in rank—commands him to “bring her home by 2200.” This is the Army, son.

The rest of the movie charts the rise and fall of a strange romance, as viewed through Priscilla’s eyes. We stay with her as Elvis, his soldierly duties complete, heads home. “How’s my little one?” he asks, in a long-distance phone call. Armed with a first-class ticket on Pan Am—and, for some unfathomable reason, the consent of her parents—Priscilla goes to visit him, arriving at Graceland in a pink dress and white gloves. After a bacchanalian interlude in Las Vegas, there’s a wonderful shot of her returning to Germany, her clothes still immaculate but her hair and makeup in meltdown. Aged seventeen, she flies back to America for more. Elvis offers her a little white dog, a red sports car as a graduation gift, and, at long last, his hand in marriage.

In some ways, “Priscilla” is an oddly old-fashioned creation. The passage of time is indicated by the tearing of pages from a calendar, and the prolongation of sex by the sight of trays, bearing food and drink, being left outside a bedroom door. Elvis, we are given to understand, has been saving himself for this pleasure—whether through moral nicety, or from a desire to avoid the crime of intimate relations with a minor, is a question left unresolved. What’s clear is that he, no less than Priscilla, is something of a kid; while denying her the comfort of any friends, he is encircled by a rowdy rat pack of pals, who cheer as the King knocks down a house for fun.

To point out that “Priscilla” is superficial, even more so than Coppola’s other films, is no derogation, because surfaces are her subject. She examines the skin of the observable world without presuming to seek the flesh beneath, and this latest work is an agglomeration of things —purchases, ornaments, and textures. We see an array of outfits, chosen by Elvis for his wife, each one lovingly accessorized with a handgun. Closeups tell the tale: bare toes, at the start, sinking deep into the nap of a carpet; false eyelashes and china knickknacks; a single pill (the first of many) that Elvis lays on Priscilla’s palm, as if it were a Communion wafer; and a mini-sphinx, gilded and ridiculous, that we glimpse as she eventually flees from Graceland. If she stays there any longer, being Mrs. Presley, she, too, will shrink into a thing.

The music we hear, during that final exit, is Dolly Parton singing “I Will Always Love You.” There are no Elvis hits in the film. (Though you may catch a tinkle of “Love Me Tender,” on a music box, as the Presleys hold their baby daughter, Lisa Marie.) This echoing void is well suited to Coppola’s purposes; what neater way to present Elvis as a lumpen, insensitive brute than to ignore what made him the greatest joy-bringer on Earth? Slice off his superhuman talents and you haul him down to the level of regular men, as mean and as faithless as the next guy. The late bloom of his Vegas shows, lingered over with relentless panache in Baz Luhrmann ’s “ Elvis ” (2022), is distilled here to images of Elvis from behind, onstage—swaying his hips or spreading his cape for the congregation. We need both movies, I would argue: last year’s frenzied act of worship and now this irreverent response, all the more potent for being so still and small. “You’re the only girl I ever loved, the only girl I want to be with,” Elvis says to Priscilla. He sounds like a cheap song.

What is it, exactly, that Nicolas Cage does? You could call it overacting, especially if you saw “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (2009) or “Mandy” (2018). I prefer to think of Cage’s style as otheracting . He approaches the whole racket of dramatic art from an angle untried by his peers, restoring to movie acting the kind of dice-rolling risk that we associate with the theatre. You sense that you could watch him three nights running in the same film, in the same cinema, and find him giving a different performance each time. It’s not that he improvises; rather, his characters seem to be improvising their own lives—making themselves up as they go along.

If “Dream Scenario,” a new film written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, is one of Cage’s most fulfilling ventures, it’s because it allows him to trade so richly in the unforeseen. He plays a lecturer named Paul Matthews—has a hero ever borne so numb a name?—who teaches evolutionary biology at a provincial college. He has tenure, spectacles, a shiny pate, a sad beard, a nice house, two daughters, and a long-suffering but loving wife, Janet (Julianne Nicholson). “You score high in assholeness,” she says to him, without rancor. Nobody hates Paul, but nobody really notices him, either. As he gives a class on zebras, noting their ability not to stand out from the herd, we can see his students thinking, Yeah, you should know.

Before long, however, Paul will be hailed as “the most interesting person in the world right now.” Why? Because he begins to appear in the dreams of other people—not just people he knows but total strangers, too. This phenomenon is never explained. It’s just a splashdown in the collective unconscious, and Paul, understandably, isn’t sure how to respond. He’s flummoxed at first, then flattered (“I’m special, I guess”), then freaked out; as you can imagine, the emotional to-and-fro is an ideal ride for Cage. Never has that eager grin of his trembled quite so helplessly between anguish and delight.

What’s particularly welcome about “Dream Scenario” is how undreamy it looks. Borgli switches from reality to reverie with clean, matter-of-fact cuts, affording us precious little opportunity to brace ourselves for the untoward. (Buñuel would raise a glass.) As a bonus, we get a tasty running gag at Paul’s expense: once inside the panoply of dreams, he doesn’t actually do anything. When one of his students has a nightmare about being stuck on a piano with two alligators slithering toward her, Paul arrives but shows no inclination to help. Someone else’s sleeping self is stalked by a gangling figure bathed in blood. Does Paul, strolling by, race to the rescue? Like hell he does. If anything, he’s even duller in the kingdom of the fantastical than he is in everyday life.

The trouble is that, for all the comedy and the poignancy of this central concept, the movie requires a plot. It is as if the bowler-hatted residents of Magritte’s paintings had to walk out of the frame and go to work. So it is that Paul travels into the city, where he’s courted by Trent (Michael Cera), a marketing jerk, who wants to transform Paul into a brand and use him to sell Sprite. One of Trent’s employees, Molly (Dylan Gelula), bids Paul bewitch her in her apartment as he recently did in her dream. (Needless to say, the outcome is so humiliating that you’ll be left curled up in your seat like a dormouse.) From here on, the story grows oddly vindictive and less appealing. Is Paul being scourged for his venial sins, or for the mortal transgression of yearning to be more than he is?

The easiest—and the least interesting—way to parse this unlikely film is to treat it as an allegory of the Internet. For dream, read meme. “How does it feel to go viral?” Paul is asked, and, once his fame spreads online, it’s hardly surprising that he should be dreamed about—he’s part of the daily detritus in the public brain—or that his erstwhile contentment should wither and rot. “Dream Scenario” strikes me as more of an Everyman fable, hacking into our obsessions in the way that a movie like “Meet John Doe,” starring Gary Cooper as a drifter caught up in a scam, reflected the anxious mood of 1941. Noble integrity just about carried Cooper through the American Dream. Nicolas Cage, hangdog and half feral, wanders into it, traps a paw, and can’t get out. ♦

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Early reviews of baz luhrmann’s ‘elvis’ claim it’s ‘deliriously awful’.

Some early reviews are claiming the much-hyped “Elvis” biopic ain’t nothing but a hound dog.

While some critics are praising the upcoming Baz Luhrmann drama — Variety called it “fizzy, delirious, impishly energized, compulsively watchable” — reviews have been mixed with one critic all shook up.

IndieWire writer David Ehrlich published his review of the Austin Butler and Tom Hanks-led film Wednesday and trash-talked the flick, calling it a “ nightmare ” as well as “deliriously awful.”

The journalist dove right into “Elvis” — out June 24 — writing that the “159-minute eyesore” is more about Hanks’ Colonel Tom Parker, the longtime manager of the “Love Me Tender” star, and less about Butler’s Elvis.

He gave “Elvis” a grade of “D.”

IndieWire described the Oscar winner’s character as the “Kentucky Fried Goldmember” and is “possibly the most insufferable movie character ever conceived.” The Hollywood Reporter seemed to agree, dubbing the “Forrest Gump” star’s role as “arguably the least appealing performance of his career.”

But for IndieWire’s Ehrlich, the problem seemed to lie in the pudding: the writing.

“Luhrmann’s dizzying script (co-written by Sam Bromell, Jeremy Doner and Craig Pearce) frequently returns to the idea that Presley’s life was caught in the crossfire between two different Americas: One gyrating towards freedom, and the other snuffing it out,” he penned in his review.

The critic also compares scenes in “Elvis” to Luhrmann’s other “sensory overload” and “swooningly electric moments” such as the fish tank sequence in his 1996 romance “Romeo + Juliet” and the wild party scene in 2013’s “The Great Gatsby.”

“The hyper-romantic energy of those films helped braid the present into the past in a way that made them both feel more alive,” he wrote. “ ‘Elvis’ discovers no such purpose. It finds so little reason for Presley’s life to be the stuff of a Baz Luhrmann movie that the equation ultimately inverts itself, leaving us with an Elvis Presley movie about Baz Luhrmann. They both deserve better.”

However, the musical biopic garnered a 12-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week. Shortly after the premiere, Hanks made sure Butler got much of the affection from the audience and directed a camera away from him to focus on “The Carrie Diaries” star.

During the French fest, Hanks avoided a question about his “ ridiculous ” accent. Parker hailed from the Netherlands and the “Philadelphia” star’s mysterious voice teetered between Dutch and American.

Despite some not-so-nice reviews, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s widow, Priscilla Presley, gave her support for the film .

Luhrmann almost teared up on Thursday during a press conference for his movie when he described his feelings when Priscilla, 77, first viewed his movie.

“No critique, no review was ever going to mean more to us than the one from the woman who was married to him,” Luhrmann said, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter . “She said: ‘If my husband was here today, he’d say “Hot damn, you are me” ‘. . . It was the best review I’ve ever had.”

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‘Megalopolis’ Review: The Fever Dreams of Francis Ford Coppola

The director’s latest is a great-man story about an architect, played by Adam Driver, driven by ideals and big plans. It’s a personal statement on an epic scale.

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By Manohla Dargis

Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is a bursting-at-the-seams hallucination of a movie — it’s wonderfully out-there. At once a melancholic lament and futuristic fantasy, it invokes different epochs and overflows with entrancing, at times confounding images and ideas that have been playing in my head since I first saw the movie in May at the Cannes Film Festival. There, it was both warmly received and glibly dismissed, a critical divide that’s nothing new for Coppola, a restlessly experimental filmmaker with a long habit of going off-Hollywood.

Nothing if not au courant, “Megalopolis” is a vision of a moribund civilization, though also a great-man story about an architect, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), who dreams of a better world. An enigmatic genius (he has a Nobel Prize) with an aristocratic mien and a flair for drama, Catilina lives in a city that resembles today’s New York by way of ancient Rome, though it mostly looks like an elaborate soundstage. As familiar as Fifth Avenue and as obscure as the far side of the moon, it is a world that mirrors its real counterpart as a playpen for the wealthy and a prison-house for the destitute. The city haunts Catilina; it also inspires him.

What Catilina dreams of is a “perfect school-city,” in which people can achieve their better selves. It’s an exalted aspiration, as seemingly boundless but also as sheltering as the blue sky, and one that invokes a long line of lofty dreamers and master builders. There are predictable obstacles, mostly other people, small-minded types without vision, idealism or maybe just faith. Among these is the mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a consummate politician with no patience for fantasies or for Catilina. Their animosity runs through the story, which is narrated by Catilina’s aide, Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne), dense with incident and populated by an array of noble souls and posturing fools.

The fools prove better company in “Megalopolis” than most of the upright types, though with their all-too human comedy they’re not always distinguishable. They begin rushing in after the jolting opener, which finds Catilina dressed in inky black and uncertainly climbing out of a window in the crown of the Chrysler Building. Before long, he is standing with one foot firmly planted and the other shakily raised over the edge. He calls out “time stop” and everything — the clouds above, the cars below — freezes, only to restart at his command. He looks like a colossus, though also brings to mind the early-cinema clown Harold Lloyd hanging over a different abyss in “Safety Last!” (a title that could work for this audacious movie).

It’s quite the to-be-or-not introduction. Given that filmmakers are in the business of stopping time, Catilina’s entrance also reads as an auteurist mission statement. So it’s a relief when Catilina gets off that precipice, even if Coppola never really does. The filmmaker has a thing for dreamers and their great, big dreams, and it’s easy to see “Megalopolis” — which he mentioned in interviews as early as 1983 — in autobiographical terms. Like Catilina, Coppola has endured and almost been consumed by catastrophic setbacks (most notably with his founding of a film studio that nearly ruined him), only to rise phoenixlike from the ashes. It’s one reason that “Megalopolis” feels like a personal statement on an epic scale.

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