Elvis was everything I expected and not much more. Like most Baz joints I need a few rewatches to settle my thoughts. It's not good in terms of typical film narrative or characterization, no one has much if any depth. (But I didn't expect that going in.) However, there's a lot of fun to be had (obvs) and it packs a lot into ~2.5 hours without actually showing much of the start and end of his life.
Fwiw I brought my mom and dad and they liked it, but one point of critique was how Presley's military service was (re?)interpreted. That said I doubt any 20-something guy would want to join in the circumstances he apparently did. Otherwise, I thought the weird framing device (jibbering Tom Hanks in a hospital gown stumbling through Dream Vegas) and wacky editing (a Luhrmann staple, 'nache) would lose them, but no. And even with shallow characters, the emotional beats seem to hit hard for those who grew up at the same time. Newer generations will probably scratch their heads why so much hubbub was made about the non-President Kennedy getting shot.
Tom Hanks is something you'll just have to get on board with from his first scene. He stays the same level with the same fat+old prosthetics with the same weird-ass accent the entire film.
Awesome music of course. I did laugh when a major story beat was "Elvis makes a protest song!!" and it temporarily revives his career... two or three scenes after semi-dismissing the Beatles, lol. I've always enjoyed Elvis' music and this movie created a new itch to deep dive his discography. One minor nitpick I had is, unless I'm dumb and missed something, there wasn't a single song played the entire way through. Maybe that's the ADHD era we live in now, but it would have been nice if, at a crucial juncture, we slow-start a song and play it the whole way through... Eh.
Between this and Rocketman it's been a good time to be a musical biopic fan.
