CBS ‘Elvis’ bio isn’t Kingly, but it’s closer

Elvis Presley would have been 70 this year, a difficult thing to conceive given the persistence of his lively younger selves in the public mind and pop culture whirl. Who knows what he might have become if only he hadn’t taken so much medicine -- a sitcom star, or president, or even the King of the Whole Wide World. He might have detoxed, done Shakespeare in the Park, cured cancer. Would he still be singing “Hound Dog”? There’s no telling with the magnificent prematurely dead.

In honor of this anniversary year, those lively younger selves will be re-created Sunday and Wednesday in “Elvis,” a CBS event-biopic made “with the full cooperation and participation” of the Presley estate, and featuring never-before-licensed-for-a-thing-like-this original recordings and scenes shot at Graceland -- although not inside, where it is forever 1977. (A documentary, “Elvis by the Presleys,” follows May 13.) Even before Elvis permanently left the building, his life was passing into legend, and the passion plays began soon after, with John Carpenter’s 1979 “Elvis,” which made a man out of Kurt Russell. There was also the 1981 “Elvis and the Beauty Queen,” with Don Johnson an unlikely King, and “Elvis and Me,” based on Priscilla Presley’s memoirs, from 1998, and the lovely, short-lived series “Elvis,” which lasted 10 episodes in 1990 and featured Michael St. Gerard as a young Presley, in the days before his fame.

Directed by James Steven Sadwith (who also made the 1992 “Sinatra” TV movie), co-written by him and Patrick Sheane Duncan (“Mr. Holland’s Opus”), and starring a look-alike Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“Vanity Fair,” “Bend It Like Beckham”) as the Big E, it is not a stunning achievement by any means and suffers from all the usual compromises of the form. Character becomes motivation; a career a montage. With so much to say and so little time, every line of dialogue or scene is meant to tell you something important, or to foreshadow important events ahead. But “Elvis” handles these things better than many such films, by the quiet naturalism of its approach and the nonchalance with which the excellent actors sidle up to the densely expository dialogue, and when it is good it is very good indeed.

Especially in its first half, as Elvis goes from town freak to local hero to national sensation, it paints a convincing picture of what it’s like to be in love with making music. Part two is more or less “Valley of the Dolls,” with ‘60s Elvis pilled-up and out of control, looking for spiritual fulfillment, avoiding sex with Priscilla (Antonia Bernath), messing around with Ann-Margret (Rose McGowan) and kept from the exercise of his true gift by his money-first manager and a movie career that even then smelled of chronic underachievement.

In spite of the official imprimatur, it is not an absolutely sanitized retelling -- you get the pills, the girls, the mother fixation (it’s strangely appropriate that the show debuts on Mother’s Day), the failures of nerve. And yet, perhaps because it bears that stamp of approval, or perhaps because the authors are more than usually mature, it’s an evenhanded, even charitable version, which gives everyone his or her due and holds none especially to blame in the slow wreckage of the good ship Elvis. Even Colonel Parker (a wonderful Randy Quaid), frequently held to be the villain of the piece, comes off well; you can see him as he sees himself. Mother Gladys (Camryn Manheim) and father Vernon (Robert Patrick) are also sympathetically treated.

Rock ‘n’ roll would have existed without Elvis, but he was the galvanic force that guaranteed world domination. Beautiful and talented to a degree that highlights the essential unfairness of life, he was both man and icon, complicated and simple, artist and commodity. Everything about him bespoke a kind of duality, in fact: deferential rebel, anti-drug drug addict, Memphis boy and Hollywood star. Like his heroes Marlon Brando and James Dean, he possessed a kind of feline masculinity -- he was soft, and he was sculpted, a former truck driver unafraid to wear pink, or even a little bit of mascara.

Rhys Meyers, who was born the year Elvis died and played a Bowie-esque glam rocker in “Velvet Goldmine,” has no trouble with the emo Elvis. He is a shade too lithe and a couple of inches on the short side -- it is just as well that the film ends in 1968, he would have been lost in the imperial jumpsuits of the 1970s -- but he’s got the eyes, and he’s done his homework, studied the footage and conned the speech. He has trained his leg to twitch and his lip to curl, and there are moments, especially early on, when he successfully suggests the excitement of the original.

But charisma -- not, in any case, a charisma as epochal as Presley’s -- is not transferable. (And yet he is possibly the most imitated man in history.) This becomes obvious in the climactic re-creation of the 1968 NBC “comeback” special, often taken to be the greatest moment of his career and a mountain too high for the filmmakers to climb. It’s a sensible place to end, making what in its entirety is a story of rise and fall and rise and fall a story of rise and fall and rise, and it keeps Rhys Meyers from having to wear a fat suit. It also leaves most of the threads of the story hanging, for a closing title card to resolve.

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‘Elvis’

Where: CBS

When: Part 1: 9 to 11 p.m. Sunday

Part 2: 8 to 10 p.m. Wednesday

Ratings: TV-14-L (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with an advisory for coarse language)

Jonathan Rhys Meyers...Elvis Presley

Randy Quaid...”Colonel” Tom Parker

Rose McGowan...Ann-Margret

Tim Guinee...Sam Phillips

Jack Noseworthy...Steve Binder

Robert Patrick...Vernon Presley

Camryn Manheim...Gladys Presley

Executive producers Howard Braunstein, Michael Jaffe, Robert Greenblatt, David Janollari. Writer Patrick Sheane Duncan. Director James Sadwith.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The King never left the building

Since Elvis Presley’s death in 1977, several actors have tried to fill the rock icon’s blue suede shoes in television movies and theatrical films. The latest is Jonathan Rhys Meyers, a 27-year-old Irishman best known to art house audiences for his performances in “Bend It Like Beckham,” “Velvet Goldmine” and “Vanity Fair.” In the new CBS miniseries “Elvis,” Rhys Meyers portrays Presley as a wide-eyed teenager in the early 1950s until his 1968 comeback performance. In a telephone interview, Rhys Meyers said that he didn’t want to do an Elvis impersonation but rather an “interpretation of what someone would be like from Tupelo, Miss., who suddenly became a phenomenon.”

“He was always childlike, and even in the home movies I watched on Elvis, he was a big kid, so I wanted to give that type of personae offstage.”

What does he think of the actors who went before him as Elvis? “I was told not to watch other Elvis performances and movies,” he said.

Here’s a look at several of the actors who have played the King over the years.

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Kurt Russell

Less than two years after Presley’s death, Russell took on the role of Presley in the acclaimed 1979 ABC movie “Elvis,” directed by John Carpenter. Russell, shedding his clean-cut Disney image, received an Emmy nomination for his efforts. Unfortunately, he resurrected Presley’s white jumpsuit for his role as a thief disguised as an Elvis impersonator in the 2001 flop “3,000 Miles to Graceland.”

Don Johnson

Three years before he landed the role of Sonny Crockett in the seminal series “Miami Vice,” Johnson, sporting a bad pompadour and even worse Southern accent, headlined the ludicrous 1981 TV movie “Elvis and the Beauty Queen.”

David Keith

The actor had Presley swagger, the accent and the sideburns in the 1988 feature “Heartbreak Hotel,” but the film’s reviews were less than fantastic, and it died a quick death at the box office

Dale Midkiff

Reactions were decidedly mixed for the actor’s rather bland impersonation of the King in the 1988 miniseries “Elvis and Me,” which was based on Priscilla Presley’s bestseller.

Michael St. Gerard

A near dead-ringer for Presley, St. Gerard played Elvis in two 1989 feature films, “Great Balls of Fire!” and “Hearts of Dixie.” His performance in ABC’s acclaimed 1990 10-part series “Elvis” drew the best reviews, but the movie languished in the ratings.

Rob Youngblood

The lanky actor was miscast in the forgettable 1993 TV movie “Elvis and the Colonel: The Untold Story.”

Val Kilmer

Though it’s no more than a cameo, Kilmer gave a rare comedic performance as the ghost of Elvis in Tony Scott’s 1993 action-thriller, “True Romance.”

Bruce Campbell

The veteran of such Sam Raimi films as “The Evil Dead” gave a comical tour-de-force in the 2002 indie film “Bubba Ho-Tep.” Campbell portrayed a cranky 68-year-old Presley living in an East Texas old-age home. The ruse is that Elvis actually switched places with an impersonator before his “death” and then missed the chance to switch back.

Source: Los Angeles Times

-- Susan King