Where he picked up the rhythms and physicality. Happily, when he's performing or the film follows him to the Black music clubs on Beale Street.īUTLER: (As Elvis) You ain't nothing but a hound dog. Colonel Parker is a fraud, but Luhrmann's portraying him is such a blatant one makes Butler's Elvis look like an idiot for listening to him. MONDELLO: None of which obscure the fact that he's Tom Hanks. We are two odd, lonely children reaching for eternity. HANKS: (As Colonel Tom Parker) We are the same, you and I. He's unavoidable, performing from under what must be pounds of latex jowls with a cartoonish accent. MONDELLO: How you feel about Tom Hanks' vaguely reptilian Parker will have a lot to do with how you feel about the movie. HANKS: (As Colonel Tom Parker) Are you ready to fly?īUTLER: (As Elvis) I'm ready, ready to fly. Who has Elvis both trapped and in some peril. HANKS: (As Colonel Tom Parker) I wish to promote you, Mr. He's not so much impersonating Elvis as inhabiting him - sexy as hell, yet innocent enough to fall for the high-on-a-Ferris-wheel pitch of Colonel Parker. He sings about a third of the songs himself, especially these early ones. Butler has the moves, the mannerisms, the voice. MONDELLO: By this time, any doubts you had going in about whether actor Austin Butler could fully capture Elvis will have evaporated. HANKS: (As Colonel Tom Parker) Now, I don't know nothing about music, but I could see in that girl's eyes he was a taste of forbidden fruit. And director Baz Luhrmann indulges in a series of shots I think we'll have to call crotch zooms, while Colonel Parker, who has up to this point been a promoter of carnival sideshow acts that make you feel things you're not sure you should feel, takes it all in. MONDELLO: So he wiggles, and they shriek. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) Them girls want to see you wiggle. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) The wiggle. MONDELLO: As he bounces with his guitar, the camera cuts between him and the audience, the young women in the audience who are transfixed and shrieking.īUTLER: (As Elvis) What are they hollering at? HANKS: (As Colonel Tom Parker) In that moment, I watched that skinny boy transform into a superhero.īUTLER: (As Elvis, singing) Well, you may go to college. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Get a haircut, buttercup. MONDELLO: Unknown to Elvis, Colonel Parker's in the wings, noting the loose-fitting pink suits, the Brylcreemed hair flopping in his eyes. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) He's a young singer from Memphis, Tenn. To a poor Black shantytown where an adolescent white boy peeps into juke joints and gets swept into a gospel revival tent all of it coming together on the night that that boy, now a teenager, steps nervously in front of an audience for the first time. TOM HANKS: (As Colonel Tom Parker) There are some who would make me out to be the villain of this here story. And what follows in the first hour, a kind of fever dream that leaps from carnival sideshow, where Colonel Tom Parker introduces himself. Before the movie even starts, he's bejeweled the Warner Brothers logo with enough diamonds and rubies to make Liberace lightheaded. KELLY: Our critic Bob Mondello is here to tell us how that worked out.īOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Baz Luhrmann is not one to ease into flamboyance. So the movie? Well, as Presley might say.ĪUSTIN BUTLER: (As Elvis) This ain't no nostalgia show. KELLY: Filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, who made "Moulin Rouge," doesn't do anything small. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Ladies and gentlemen, here's Elvis Presley. What happens when the king of movie extravagance meets the king of rock 'n' roll?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |