But we don’t see the yucky burger binges or the adult diapers. He stays sweaty but reasonably svelte until almost the very end, when we see a decorous hint of flab. There is, for example, not really any such thing as Fat Elvis here. But otherwise it sticks to a defanged version of the script. There are some tiny unpredictable touches – such as a hint that Elvis secretly inflamed young gay men in the States as well as straight women. We get the basics of Presley’s career: the early days of hardship, the profound influence of black music, the blues and gospel his days on the hayseed country circuit before signing for Parker, the huge Elvismania success, the shrewd decision to calm moral-majority fears by doing two years military service in Germany, marriage to Priscilla, the bubblegum movies, the televised 1968 Comeback Special and the long Vegas goodbye. Colonel Tom is a kind of repeating cameo in Elvis’s life and Luhrmann is even less interested in Parker’s inner self than in Elvis’s – the Colonel’s own wretched post-Elvis life and death are shrugged off in the closing credit titles.
But Luhrmann is clearly unwilling or unable to explore the dysfunctional Jekyll-and-Hyde relationship between the Colonel and Elvis in case any sort of dark or sad mood predominates.
