Review by Paul Salfen
This is Paul Salfen with your KLAK Movie Minute. In theaters this week is Elvis, the long-awaited and Presley-approved biopic of the legendary singer from Baz Luhrmann. Given that it is a Luhrmann film, you know it will be colorful, flashy, loud, full of music, and giant bursts of energy, which describes the singer’s life pretty well. Of course it wouldn’t work without the right person playing The King himself and they found him in Austin Butler, who is younger and ecompasses the young Elvis perfectly but somehow does even better in the final act as the older and larger Elvis. The film shows the man as a loving but overworked and overwhelmed man that made some bad lifestyle choices but overall fought racism and corruption to help pave the way for the music and entertainers we know today. Tom Hanks does a fitting Colonel Parker, the shadowy opportunist that definitely made Elvis who he became but also hindered and possibly shortened his life. The only complaint is at 2 hours and 40 minutes, that’s a whole lot of excess for too long for many viewers, but in all fairness, given his life, it could have been done in three long films. That’s it for this week. Join me next week and every week for another Movie Minute right here on 97.5 KLAK and AMFM Magazine.
