Elvis — Baz Luhrmann’s mad, maximalist glitterbomb of a biopic

What counts as success for a film anyway? One definition is being the movie you would bet your last penny the director wanted to make. If so, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis already feels like a smash. A mad, maximalist glitterbomb of a biopic, it is hard to watch without picturing the Australian showman just off-screen, beaming at his own high-gloss vision.

Then there is the likely verdict of the fans. Tick the box again. Because if you enjoy the thought of the life of Elvis Presley evoked with the same berserker flamboyance Luhrmann gave The Great Gatsby or Moulin Rouge! — well, yes, this is exactly that and then some. To everyone else I can only say: bring aspirin.

Luhrmann has built his career on making hyper-familiar source material even larger, louder, more Luhrmannish. A sharp eye for talent too, and a lucky touch with the zeitgeist. His big-league breakthrough Romeo + Juliet made Leonardo DiCaprio male lead just as the actor went stratospheric, then became a beloved piece of Nineties nostalgia for teenagers. Elvis feels like a spin on the same formula, with near-unknown Austin Butler a fresh face as star. And the kids are once more in Luhrmann’s sights.

The film’s ideal audience are those who have never even heard of Elvis. This is no insult. The logic is sound — noble, in fact. Half a century after his death, it seems unwise to assume that the average 16-year-old would know or care who made “Hound Dog” famous. Luhrmann’s heartbreak fable is designed for them, here to introduce modern teens to the boy who made being young so terrifying to adults. So lucrative as well.

Tom Hanks stars opposite Butler as svengali manager Colonel Tom Parker. From beneath a blancmange of make-up, he unveils a crackers Dutch accent and childcatcher vibes, Parker’s priority forever the Elvis merchandise.

God, the film can be weird. Yet in its cartoonish frenzy, Luhrmann does actually capture how thrilling and subversive the early Presley must have been. On smaller screens, Danny Boyle’s streaming series Pistol is now telling the tale of the Sex Pistols: fun but danger-free. This Elvis, by contrast, lands as a true alien presence in Eisenhower’s America. A lot is down to sex. In the first concert we see, orgasmic shrieks spread wildly among the young women in the audience, as if an aphrodisiac mouse was at large.

And what manner of man is this, corrupting the girlhood of Wisconsin and Kentucky? Luhrmann only draws from history when he puts the object of their desire in a candy pink suit and eyeshadow. Race is another hot button of course, Presley’s whole being an affront to segregationists. The next show draws the cops, erupting into bedlam as Butler humps the stage and howls “Trouble”. (“Because I’m evil . . .”)

The genius of Presley, Hanks tells us — though the accent demands guesswork — was giving audiences “feelings they weren’t sure they should enjoy”. The line might double as mission statement for the director: a Luhrmannifesto. He is as much an auteur as anyone in movies, and his new film duly comes laden with outsize flourishes, split screens, God shots, whirring headlines. In addition to its hero, Elvis wants to tell young ticket-buyers that cinema too might mean something to them: bigger than TikTok, more caffeinated than Red Bull. Blink and you’ll miss half a dozen scenes.

What you won’t miss even with your eyelids held open is much inner life. The fault isn’t Butler’s. The star excels at the karaoke, but when the singing stops, the script keeps him a cipher. At first, it doesn’t much matter. For now, Elvis is still only a kid.

It matters more the longer the film plays, when we might expect fine grain to the character. And the film plays long indeed. Almost three hours is quite a stretch to be drowned in rhinestones. You may wish for the 60-minute concert movie Elvis might have been.

No surprise that the film’s second act focuses on the deathless 1968 TV Comeback Special. It makes for a self-contained drama in which the songs tell the story — which ones are sung and how. With Martin Luther King murdered in Memphis weeks before, Elvis publicly repays his debt to black American culture. Always eager to dodge controversy, Parker fumes in a Christmas jumper.

The colonel loses the battle but the war will be his. Ahead is Vegas. Like the contracts with which he hoodwinked his star, Elvis too obliges Presley to split the movie 50/50 with his manager. The most obvious result is an excess of Hanks, a bravura screen actor who here delivers the most flatly ridiculous performance of his career. (Anyone who saw Cloud Atlas may need a moment to process that.) Still, it may be a masterstroke. What better symbol for Luhrmann’s cautionary tale? Now, as then, the olds spoil everything.

★★★☆☆

In cinemas from June 24