Priscilla

This weekend, Priscilla, the newest film from Sophia Coppola, was released in theaters. Priscilla follows Priscilla Presley through her life as she meets Elvis and marries him. It tells the Elvis-Priscilla relationship from her perspective and provides a look into her life. After seeing Elvis last year, I was very interested in checking out this movie and seeing her side of the story.

As a whole, the movie does a great job of giving us her story and what her life was like being married to Elvis. the movie keeps her front and center the entire time. While Elvis is still a major part of this movie, he never overshadows her or distracts from the story the movie is trying to tell. Because of this, we are given a great amount of time to see her character grow and her reactions to the major Elvis events. The best parts of the movie were the performances of Priscilla and Elvis. Carlee Spaeny was excellent as Priscilla. She does a great job of portraying Priscilla in different stages of life. Jacob Eldridge also does a great job as Elvis and you can totally see him as the pop star. Both actors are pretty unknown and I hope they get to be in more films after this. I also like how the movie manages to bring a different perspective to the Elvis-Priscilla relationship. This movie portrays the relationship as quite toxic and gives us a story of how Priscilla finds her way out of it. Finally, I think the movie does a great job of defining Priscilla as her own person instead of just Elvis's wife. We get to see her interests and goals and what she had to put on hold to be with Elvis.

One thing that some people may take issue with is that this movie does not portray Elvis in a very positive light. He comes across as very controlling and selfish and as an overall bad influence on Priscilla. I didn't take issue with this but some big Elvis fans may not care for it.

There are a few things that keep this movie from being an A. The biggest issue I had was the length. With a lot of movies, my issue is that they are too long. With this film, I felt it needed to be 15-20 minutes longer. This movie clocks in at just under 2 hours. I felt it could've been 2 hours and 15 or 20 minutes and told a more effective story. It spent a good amount of time in their pre-married life but I felt it rushed through all the events of their marriage. I think they could have spent more time exploring their marriage and what caused it to decay. I also thought it was a bit weird that this is an Elvis-focused movie but doesn't have any Elvis songs in it. I understand there was an issue getting rights to the song but I feel that a couple of Elvis songs at the right times could've gone a long way. All things considered, I think the soundtrack was very good for what they had to work with.

In the end, I thought this was a very well-made movie that adds a fresh perspective to a very familiar icon. Had it been about 20 minutes longer I think it would have been a bit better but overall it was a very interesting and compelling story.

Grade: B+ Score: 8/10 Recommedation: Check it out