Lisa Johnson Mandell’s EPiC – Elvis Presley in Concert review dethrones the King, and she knows she’s going to take all kinds of heat for it. Bring it!

I’ve never been a fan of Elvis Presley. Maybe because I remember him best in his later years, when he seemed to me an overstuffed parody of himself. Or maybe because, as I was reminded by one of my favorite radio hosts with whom I chat live on the air weekly, “you can love the Beatles, the Stones and Elvis, but you can’t love all three.” Guess which two I pick.

Director Baz Luhrmann’s seeming obsession with Elvis is understandable. While working on his extraordinary 2022 biopic Elvis with Austin Butler in the title role,  Luhrmann’s team uncovered dozens of boxes of previously unseen 35 mm and 8 mm film footage in a Warner Bros. archive, including outtakes from the classic concert films Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970) and Elvis on Tour (1972).

Much of the footage had no usable sound. Over the next two years, Luhrmann’s team painstakingly restored the visuals and synced them with audio recordings of Elvis’s performances and interviews. A roughly 45-minute interview with Elvis talking about his life was also uncovered — and that interview helps narrate the film, giving it a personal and reflective thread woven through the concert material.

EPiC – Elvis Presley in Concert review — the good

And I admit the bio doc is masterfully put together. The editing, especially the sound editing, is extraordinary.

But does it reveal anything about Elvis we don’t already know? Absolutely not. There are vague references to his family and Colonel Parker, but they’re all peripheral. There’s only a nod to how or where he lives, or his relationships with others. It shows some decidedly odd behavior with no explanation of it—there are extended segments of him chatting while supposedly rehearsing with his band. He rushes through many songs, playing and singing them in double time without emotion. He’s sweaty and manic.

When I began to get really uncomfortable with his mania, the friend and critic sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, “I read Pricilla’s book. She said he was on speed most of the time.” Well that explains it, even though the film doesn’t go anywhere near that.

EPiC – Elvis Presley in Concert — the bad and the ugly

My critic colleagues are cheering EPiC for being a celebration of Elvis’s talent, something I never appreciated, apparently. There are myriad clips of him performing at the International. There he is, strutting before the audience, sweating, mugging and shamelessly pandering, tossing off canned, cliched quips. He’s mostly wearing absurd bushy mutton chops and unflattering low-cut jumpsuits with grommets the size of salad plates and architectural collars that almost reach up to his ears…and capes! I never understood what’s up with the capes.

And those weird karate moves and poses—don’t get me started! I once interviewed one of Elvis’s karate instructors, whose most prized possession, kept under glass in his living room, was a pair of Elvis’s rhinestone-framed tinted glasses. Little did he know that when he was teaching Elvis karate, he was also choreographing his concerts.

Although I wasn’t around for it, I admire the boundaries Elvis broke in his early career, and I feel for sorry for the outrageously ill-advised career moves he made under the Colonel’s watch—which were also not elaborated upon, BTW. But I find clips of his performances in latter years more indulgent than entertaining, bordering on the laughable. But not in a good way.

If you also love the Beatles and the Stones as much as I do, you may feel like I did, like I’m  caught in a trap — I can’t walk out. But not because I love you too much, baby. I’m a critic and can’t leave the theater until the film’s over.

Rated PG-13

1 Hour 36 Minutes

If, after reading this EPiC — Elvis Presley in Concert review, you still want to see it, maybe even in IMAX, as is being promoted, get times and tickets in on Fandango.

Lisa Johnson Mandell’s EPiC – Elvis Presley in Concert review dethrones the King, and she knows she’s going to take all kinds of heat for it. Bring it!