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Mixed reviews for 'Elvis' despite 12 minute standing ovation at Cannes

Austin Butler and Tom Hanks star in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. (Warner Bros.)
Austin Butler and Tom Hanks star in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. (Warner Bros.)

New movie Elvis has had mixed reviews from critics despite going down a storm at the Cannes Film Festival.

The film starring Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks as his manager Colonel Tom Parker – which follows the singer’s career and his relationship with Parker – received an incredible 12 minute standing ovation after it was screened at the event in France.

But while Butler’s performance has received generally positive reviews, some critics have suggested the film, directed by Baz Luhrmann, isn't quite what it could have been.

Read more: Tom Hanks wows fans with weight loss transformation in Cannes

The Guardian gave it just two out of five stars, with reviewer Peter Bradshaw calling it “incurious yet frantic”.

Austin Butler and Tom Hanks star in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. (Warner Bros.)
The film looks at Elvis's relationship with his manager. (Warner Bros.)

In an article entitled ‘Baz Luhrmann’s squeaky-clean King is shaking no one up’, he said it wasn’t so much a movie as it was a very long trailer and that it was “a relentless, frantically flashy montage, epic and yet negligible at the same time, with no variation of pace”.

IndieWire called the film “utterly deranged”.

Reviewer David Ehrlich also called it “monotonous” and said that Luhrmann’s Elvis “never becomes his own man”.

And Vanity Fair said that Butler was “the only thing that works” in the film.

Austin Butler and Tom Hanks star in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. (Warner Bros.)
Tom Hanks plays the star's manager. (Warner Bros.)

Elvis fared better in The Telegraph, where Robbie Collin gave it four out of five stars.

He also praised both Butler and Hanks’ performances, saying that Butler was a “seductive” Elvis and that Hollywood star Hanks was “hugely entertaining”.

The Independent also gave the film an impressive four stars.

Clarisse Loughrey said Butler has “the looks, the voice, the stance and the wiggle nailed down” and also served up the “essence of Elvis-ness”.

However, she also said that Hanks felt a bit like “an accessory”.

(Left-right) Austin Butler, Priscilla Presley, Olivia DeJonge, Tom Hanks and Alton Mason attend the Elvis premiere during during the 75th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France. Picture date: Wednesday May 25, 2022.
The movie went down a storm in Cannes. (PA)

“He’s all but buried underneath layers of prosthetics and a pantomime Dutch accent, seemingly cast only so that the warm smirk of America’s dad can trip a few people into questioning whether he’s really the villain of all this,” she said.

Read more: Cannes Film Festival 2022: The biggest films from Elvis to Crimes Of The Future

Elvis is due to be released in the UK in June.

Watch: Priscilla Presley joins stars of Elvis biopic on Cannes red carpet