Early reviews of Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Elvis’ claim it’s ‘deliriously awful’
nypost.com“fizzy, delirious, impishly energized, compulsively watchable” — reviews have been mixed with one critic all shook up.IndieWire writer David Ehrlich published his review of the Austin Butler and Tom Hanks-led film Wednesday and trash-talked the flick, calling it a “nightmare” as well as “deliriously awful.”The journalist dove right into “Elvis” — out June 24 — writing that the “159-minute eyesore” is more about Hanks’ Colonel Tom Parker, the longtime manager of the “Love Me Tender” star, and less about Butler’s Elvis.He gave “Elvis” a grade of “D.”IndieWire described the Oscar winner’s character as the “Kentucky Fried Goldmember” and is “possibly the most insufferable movie character ever conceived.” The Hollywood Reporter seemed to agree, dubbing the “Forrest Gump” actor’s role as “arguably the least appealing performance of his career.”But for IndieWire’s Ehrlich, the problem seemed to lie in the pudding: the writing.“Luhrmann’s dizzying script (co-written by Sam Bromell, Jeremy Doner and Craig Pearce) frequently returns to the idea that Presley’s life was caught in the crossfire between two different Americas: One gyrating towards freedom, and the other snuffing it out,” he penned in his review.The critic also compares scenes in “Elvis” to Luhrmann’s other “sensory overload” and “swooningly electric moments” such as the fish tank sequence in his 1996 romance “Romeo + Juliet” and the wild party scene in 2013’s “The Great Gatsby.” “The hyper-romantic energy of those films helped braid the present into the past in a way that made them both feel more alive,” he wrote. “’Elvis’ discovers no such purpose.
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