Why Isn’t ‘Elvis’ a Home Run? Because It’s Not Actually Baz Luhrmann-ish Enough (Column)
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticReading the reviews of Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis,” one would be forgiven for thinking that it must be some madly baroque spectacle of exquisite excess, the sort of thing that makes people roll their eyes — or that makes the eyes of others widen with delight — when they hear the name “Baz Luhrmann.”In The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney writes, “How you feel about Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Elvis’ will depend largely on how you feel about Baz Lurhmann’s brash, glitter-bomb maximalism.” In Rolling Stone, K.
Austin Collins calls the film “a brash, overwhelming experience. It’s a carnival in movie form,” while The New York Times’ A.O.
Scott says, “All that satin and rhinestone, filtered through Mandy Walker’s pulpy, red-dominated cinematography, conjures an atmosphere of lurid, frenzied eroticism.
You might mistake this for a vampire movie.” In my own review of “Elvis,” I, too, danced the Baz Luhrmann jig, calling it “a spangly pinwheel of a movie that converts the Elvis saga we all carry around in our heads into a lavishly staged biopic-as-pop-opera.” If I had read those reviews and was going to see “Elvis” this weekend, I would probably expect to be strapping myself into an unrelenting roller-coaster of sequined extravagance.
Read more on variety.com
