About that new Elvis flick out of Australia…
Star of the show Austin Butler plays a kick ass “young” Elvis – even though he turns 31 in August – nearly 10 years older than the young King he plays in the movie.
My abbreviated take: For anyone younger than 40, this nearly three hour movie can get tedious, so you may want to take on some caffeine before.
And while it starts with a bang – that being Butler’s powerful resurrection of the King – watching a COVID striken Tom Hanks screw Elvis over in business dealings gets old.
Or as movie dude Jack Poessiger put it, “I didn’t buy Hanks in the role, did you? I had trouble buying him in the role, even though it was Tom Hanks. And Tom Hanks and his wife both got COVID pretty seriously and they had to shut the set down for like six months.”
Speaking of Jack, he’s generally among the first to gripe about movies being excessively long, but he forgot to mention it in this online review.
“Yeah, that was the biggest complaint,” Poessiger says. “That it was a little over the limit, lengthwise. They could have taken 15 minutes out of it.”
Try 39 from the two hour and 39 minute movie, is my suggestion.
Even former KY102 legend Max Floyd thought it was too long, Poessiger says. And Max’s been off the air for like 20 years and is a newfound widower
Back to the age thang, Elvis was just 21 when he first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show and was introduced by actor Charles Laughton because Sullivan was home recuperating from a serious car accident.
The best thing Poessiger can say about the new Elvis movie:
“It’s bringing back the old folks to the movies. Kinda like the new Tom Cruise ‘Top Gun’ movie did.”
Plus it reminds Jack of the time he actually met Elvis, early on in both their careers.
“It was the only time I really got goosebumps,” Poessiger reminisces. “The only time I kinda froze up meeting someone.”
Now that’s what I call full circle…
From getting goosebumps to struggling to stay awake.
Interesting you bring this story up as Max and I were talking Saturday about getting old and what we are watching. He said outside of Elvis being long he sort of liked it and thought it was worth seeing but as me he’d rather watch such at home. He did mention it was the first time he’d been to a movie for a long time but that Jack had invited him so he went. At that point I brought up the documentary George Carlin’s American Dream of which we both declared was for sure the best thing we have seen in a long time. It’s on HBO and 3 hrs and 37 minutes long. Max got to reminiscing about how he use to listen to Carlin when he was on the air in Fort Worth Tx back in the day.
As for the Elvis movie, sure I’ll watch it as I grew up knowing about Elvis and hearing Elvis on records before WHB came along. My mother as a lot of women in the 50’s and 60’s and so on were huge Elvis fans and I’m sure those who are alive still are. He was one of the greats no doubt. I never got to see Elvis on stage but my mother saw him all 5 times he was here in KC .
Once again, I think we’re tied in terms of Elvis appreciation…
I just happened to get more sucked in and opted for a big screen experience. Had I known it would last nearly three hours I might have thought the better of it.
Or perhaps not.
How about for everyone under 60, this movie gets tedious. As a late boomer/early x er, the legend of Elvis, was just that, a legend. Any footage of him actually rocking, was grainy black and white footage wearing out of style clothes. His current stuff ( in my youth in the 70’s) was basically slightly harder rocking than Dean Martin.
I’m not going argue with you, I was trying to play nice by using 40 as the age boredom wouldst it…
I think we’re basically on the same page. Elvis was either a childhood famous guy name, a movie star in really bad movies and a Las Vegas, white belt wearing has been.
Because he died so relatively young and tragically and because Jack Soden – a young stockbroker from Kansas City took over his retro empire and Graceland, it made for excellent column material and I kinda got sucked in when I had kids in the late 90s to the music.
Cutting edge? No way.
Too bad they killed off three years and nearly three hours, doing what could have should have been done in a handful of months and 90 minutes, plus or minus.
Elvis was a hero to most, but he
Never meant shit to me, you see, straight out
Racist—that sucker was simple and plain
Uh, okay…