reviewed by: Charity Bishop
       

One summer evening, my dad caught Elvis in concert, not too long before his unfortunate death. For three hours, through this film, I felt as though I understood something of the fascination the public held for the tragic singer who came out of such humble beginnings and achieved national stardom. Produced several years ago as a miniseries, Elvis has finally been released on DVD.

Small town boy Elvis Presley (Jonathan Rhys Myers) has magnificent ambitions. He wants to sing for a living. Not just in the church where he grew up, or at social gatherings. He wants to make it big and get picked up by a singing group. His loving mother Gladys (Camryn Manheim) believes he is capable of great things, but his father Vernon (Robert Patrick) is much more skeptical. Still, nothing can stand between Elvis and his dreams and with the $3.50 he saves, he cuts a local demo of a single song for his "mama" and gives it to her. The couple who run the demo store are impressed with his voice as well as his determination and several years later, call him in for an audition with a local band. But nothing Elvis sings seems to fit what the studio wants. In order to shake out his nerves, Elvis sings a little to himself -- and the recorders are switched on. Before he knows it, "That's All Right, Mama" is a huge hit.

Suddenly, everyone wants a piece of Elvis and the man most interested in his potential for success is "Colonel" Tom Parker (Randy Quaid), a high powered agent who convinces Elvis to pull up his small town roots and hit the big time. But going on tour makes gradual changes in the young man's life. Some of them are for the good as he grows confidence, but most of them are for the bad, since it sends him down a self-destructive path of drinking, drugs, and womanizing. Girls love him. Their parents hate him. His records sell like hot cakes but his dance moves are banned from every self-respecting town in the south. To be perfectly honest, the first portion of this film did not have me convinced that the leading actor could pull it off. Jonathan Rhys Myers is very talented but he looks and sounds nothing like Elvis. He has a beautiful voice with remarkable range and the movie is strongest when it is him singing, rather than lip synching to old Elvis tracks.

(Horribly, sometimes the vocals and lip synching are a fraction of a second off, making it obvious that he's faking.) I think in that respect the miniseries would have been stronger if they would have recorded all new material (although it is the only film authorized to use the original recordings). That said, after twenty minutes or so of suspended disbelief, I was able to get into the film and allow it to carry me along with the events. I know nothing of Elvis' life and so I cannot comment on the accuracy of the series, but I suspect it is fairly honest in its depiction of him, as well as the people who surround him. Because this was filmed for network television, the content is moderate. There is quite a bit of mild profanity in the second half, as Elvis' language gets rougher along with his lifestyle. It shows him not only taking drugs, but encouraging his girlfriend to take them as well. There is no sexual content, but it's implied that Elvis has a steady string of girlfriends. Once, he has two towel-wrapped fan girls in his room. He becomes infatuated with a fourteen year old girl and engages in some passionate kissing with her, but they never take it too far because he might "go to jail." One scene opens with him on top of her, and a great deal of heavy breathing; but they were only kissing. Eventually, they do move in together and later on are married. His hands wander a bit with his first girlfriend and she slaps them away, reminding him not to fondle her.

Elvis goes through a "religious" period in which he is reading through a great many books about God, however some of them have a little bit of a new age slant, and his own view of his insignificance in the grand scheme of God's plan for mankind is skewered. His agent, not liking this period of searching, orders all of the books to be destroyed. Elvis is quite a decent film by most standards. It's not brilliant enough that it will land in my collection of personal favorites, but for anyone interested in the morals and beliefs of the time period, or the sensation he caused through his "indecent" behavior, it's an interesting and often informative glimpse into the past.