This Is Elvis

Its ambition is so great that the production’s occasional melodramatic touches can not only be forgiven, but viewed as having been executed in the spirit of the man himself. Read full review

This Is Elvis is the extraordinary record of a man who simultaneously became a great star and was destroyed by alcohol and drug addiction. What is most striking about its documentary footage is that we can almost always see both things happening at once. Read full review

Unlike previous documentaries, this one focuses on the star's life more than his music and gives the best hints yet of why Presley's skyrocket ride to stardom led him to self-destruct. [11 May 1981]

This isn't a particularly well-made film, or even a truthful one - as a matter of fact, its fraudulence is its one uncompromising aspect. And yet it is mesmerizing, if not as a drama or documentary, then as an artifact. Read full review

A real curiosity item, This Is Elvis is a fast-paced gloss on Presley's life and career packed with enough fine music and unusual footage to satisfy anyone with an Interest in the late singing idol. Read full review

Featuring interviews from his ex-wife Priscilla Presley and those who knew him best, and including four different actors portraying him at four distinct time periods of his life, it's a comprehensive, defining look at his rise as well as what continues to make him an enduring pop-cultural icon decades after the height of his career. Read full review

Anyone who feels immune to the charisma of Elvis Presley should immediately see This Is Elvis. If you are not transfixed by his sexual aura, his liquid musical ease, his promiscuous stylistic range and his mysterious mixture of shyness and vulgarity, chances are you've been living at odds with the second half of the twentieth century. [04 May 1981, p.44]

This Is Elvis could have been called This Is America: it's a portrait of a face full of wounds, warts and wonders. [09 May 1981]

The film is hair-raising because of what Elvis turns into.

At times it is fascinating, at other times pure Memphis cornpone.