Elvis & Nixon (2016)

Review

86min

Genre:      Fact-based, Comedy

Director:   Liza Johnson

Cast:        Michael Shannon, Kevin Spacey, Alex Pettyfer…and more

Writers:    Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal and Cary Elwes

-Synopsis-

Amazon studios presents a comedic chronicle of the events leading up to one of the weirdest meetings in White House history, when president Richard Nixon met the “King of Rock n’ Roll” Elvis Presley in 1970.

This is not the 1st film about this subject; 1997’s “mockumentary” TV movie ‘Elvis Meets Nixon’ also chronicled the events surrounding this bizarre meeting of minds. But blessed with the considerable talents of Michael Shannon as “The King” and Kevin Spacey as the controversial 37th President of the United States, director Liza Johnson crafts a more sophisticated and quirky character piece with historical implications.

‘Elvis & Nixon’ is no doubt a strange film, but this fiction is no stranger than the truth of the actual events, or at least what we think we know from a meeting which was never recorded or officially transcribed.

Johnson and the writers understandably take artistic licences in framing this story, with the ever captivating Michael Shannon presenting his own subdued version of the “Las Vegas era” Elvis we all know. A slightly self-loathing and child-like “King”, fully engaged in the communist paranoia of the time and on a mission in Washington DC, to become an undercover federal agent and help the American youth escape the shackles of a growing drug culture.

There he meets the one man who can make that all happen; a socially like-minded president with similar political leanings, played expertly by Kevin Spacey as a gruff and irritable caricature of a man who had a questionable character, and many would say limited moral fibre.

‘Elvis & Nixon’ has plenty of quirky charm and more than a few laughs that come from people’s reactions to and interactions with Elvis, and to a lesser extent Nixon, not to mention “The King’s” obsession with guns, whenever and wherever he was.

But despite the offbeat nature of the story, which resulted in the iconic and most requested picture in the US National Archives; Liza Johnson can’t quite produce a film that wholly justifies turning this one brief event into a feature length movie, despite its short 86 minute runtime.

‘Elvis & Nixon’ feels like a stretched-out story, especially when the focus deviates from the two leads onto their supporting characters, particularly Elvis’s with Jerry Schilling; a long-time friend and confidant who was an advisor on the film and is unsurprisingly painted as the moral heart of the piece, rather unconvincingly, and tediously breaking up the momentum of the movie. But there’s still plenty here to entertain and marginally inform if not make a lasting impact.

The Bottom Line…

Based on bizarre facts but executed with plenty of fiction, ‘Elvis & Nixon’ feels like an overstretched short or comedy sketch, but the abundance of offbeat humour and bewitching performances by two lead master-actors make this iconic meeting of delusional minds more than worth an hour and a half of your day.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Elvis Meets Nixon (1997)

Comedy mockumentary TV movie about Elvis Presley’s 1970 trip to Washington DC to become an honorary DEA agent, only to become one of the most bizarre meeting in recent history when he meet the then president Richard Nixon.

Directed by Allan Arkush and starring Rick Peters, Bob Gunton and Alyson Court among others.

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