Although it is more of a cartoonish-ly caricatured account it is quite an amusing one...however caricatured and embellished, Elvis and Nixon is a story of actual events, and more importantly it reveals an aspect of American culture and leadership that every American, at least, should see...a quite worthy as well as a
significant effort...Rick Peters does a fine job playing Elvis who became a caricature of himself by the time the Beatles arrived...Bob Gunton interprets Nixon in a more caricatured way than Peters does Elvis (if that is possible)...of course Nixon is also quite easy to caricature as has frequently been done but here one feels it might have been funnier and more revealing if Gunton were able to play "Tricky Dick" a bit straighter...the movie is both a rather frightening while also an affectionate portrait of both these actual cultural icons...to balance both these characterizations is one of the film's merits... Also the movie benefits from having other "real life" celebrities help set up certain sequences, such as Dick Cavett, Wayne Newton, and Tony Curtis (from whom Elvis initially modeled his haircut (that alone was an interesting revelation particularly as one thought that that began with white Rock-n-Roll...not to mention that Elvis modeled his voice on that of Dean Martin - Elvis looked back to create the future)...Actually it was quite surprising that not a single respected film critic has written a single word about this film, particularly as significant as it seems...even if those reviews (as the movie may deserve) were to be primarily negative ones...
January 17, 2012
