Review of Elvis & Nixon (2016) by Kevin M — 20 Aug 2016

"Elvis & Nixon" surprised me. I expected a bloated, one-joke "Saturday Night Live" sketch but what I got instead is a ton of scenes that made me chuckle and a choice few that gave me flat-out belly laughs. And if that's not enough, there are also poignant moments that deal with the pained loneliness of both Elvis and Nixon and how this spurred their quirky behaviors. The movie theorizes that this odd couple has more in common than first meets the eye.

One of my favorite scenes is when Elvis and his sidekicks dismally flunk the White House metal detector test. I also enjoy the scene where Egil Krogh briefs Elvis on the protocol of addressing the President while Elvis's cronies do the exactly the same: they brief White House Deputy Assistant Dwight Chapin on how they expect Richard Nixon to act in the presence of the King of Rock and Roll. (We Americans are fond of taking arrogant potshots at the rules of meeting British royalty, but we have the same thing with our own brands of royalty, don't we?) I also laughed out loud when Elvis defied Krogh's rules and pigs out on Nixon's private snacks, leaving none for poor Richard.

"Elvis & Nixon" is another example of a genre that speculates on what happens behind closed doors during footnotes in show biz history. Others in this genre include: "Two of Us" (an VH1 TV movie that dramatizes the evening in 1976 when Paul McCartney pays a surprise visit to John Lennon at his NYC home in the Dakota), "Tru" (a televised one-man play starring Robert Morris that speculates on Truman Capote's devastation during Christmas 1975 when he realizes his jet-set friends are banishing him), and "Five Minutes, Mr. Welles" (a short directed by and starring Vincent D'Onofrio, depicting Orson Welles last-minute prep for his brilliant "cuckoo clock" scene in "The Third Man." In my opinion, "Elvis & Nixon" is every bit as good as these three efforts.

One last thing: I cannot ignore the superb acting of "Elvis & Nixon." As I said, this is no comedy sketch. Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon portray Nixon and Elvis with the same seriousness they apply to all their roles. Rich Little and Frank Gorshin fans will be disappointed to learn that only token efforts are made to imitate the actual appearances and voices of Elvis and Nixon. No cheap laughs here. They play it straight and honest, which in this case is much funnier. The supporting cast cooks, too, especially Colin Hanks as Egil Krogh, the White House assistant who first understands the political hay of choreographing a meetup between these two icons.

Oh, and one more last thing: the music. This film is crammed with familiar 1960s and 1970s hit music but no - I repeat - no Elvis music. I don't know if this was an artistic choice or if the Presley estate simply refused permission to play the King's music. In either case, the non-Elvis music the filmmakers settled on fits perfectly in each scene.

So what's next for this footnote-in-entertainment-history genre? How about the 1964 meeting of Bob Dylan and the Beatles where he supposedly introduces them to weed? Or James Dean's legendary rocky meeting with Marilyn Monroe? Or how about Lou Reed befriending magician Penn Jillette after one of Penn and Teller's early performances (1981 in San Francisco?) only to discover that Jillette is actually the long-running president of The Lou Reed Fan Club? The possibilities are endless. And so is the fun.