When Baz Luhrmann’s movie “Elvis” came out in 2022, with Austin Butler playing the King, plenty of critics weighed in. But for a lot of fans, only one opinion really counted. It belonged to Elvis’s own daughter.
Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s only child, saw the movie twice. Then she wrote about it in a post, and she didn’t hold back.
“I have seen Baz Luhrmann’s movie ‘Elvis’ twice now, and let me tell you that it is nothing short of spectacular,” she wrote.
She was especially taken with Butler. “Austin Butler channeled and … my father’s heart and soul beautifully,” she wrote. Then she couldn’t resist a joke: “(If he doesn’t get an Oscar for this, I will eat my own foot, haha.)”
That’s a funny, plainspoken line from someone who clearly loved what she saw.
This 2022 press footage lets you hear Lisa Marie and her daughter Riley Keough talk about the movie together with Butler.
Lisa Marie and Riley talk about the movie with Austin Butler
Memphis got its own special night with the film. On June 11, 2022, three generations of Presley women, Priscilla, Lisa Marie and Riley, went to a screening of “Elvis” at the Guest House at Graceland.
An Italian Elvis fan club caught Lisa Marie at that screening, so this clip puts you there on her father’s home turf.
Lisa Marie at the Memphis screening
The line in her post that stands out most, though, isn’t part of her review. It’s what she noticed once the movie ended and she looked over at her girls.
To know why it hit her so hard, it helps to know who they are. Riley Keough is Lisa Marie’s oldest child. Harper and Finley are her twin girls, born in 2008. They turned 18 last month.
Here’s what Lisa Marie wrote:
“What moved me to tears as well was watching Riley and Harper, and Finley afterwards, all 3 visibly overwhelmed in the best way possible way, and so filled with pride about their grandfather and his legacy in a way that I have not previously experienced.”
That was the feeling she said she had never had before. It came from watching her three daughters, overwhelmed and proud, as they took in their grandfather’s story on the big screen.
Any grandparent who has watched the kids discover where the family came from knows that one.
FOX 11 Los Angeles has a clip of Lisa Marie reacting to the movie in June 2022, so you can hear her talk about it in her own voice from that summer.
Lisa Marie reacts to “Elvis” in June 2022
Ten days after the Memphis screening, on June 21, 2022, Priscilla, Lisa Marie and Riley put their handprints in cement at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Harper and Finley were there with them.
This video from the TCL Chinese Theatre shows the Presley family together at the ceremony.
The Presley family at the TCL Chinese Theatre
Luhrmann is back with more Elvis, too. His new concert film, “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” is a different film from the 2022 movie, and it’s nominated at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards tomorrow, Sunday, Nov 8.
But the 2022 movie is the one Lisa Marie wrote about, and she said exactly what it meant to her family. “You can feel and witness Baz’s pure love, care, and respect for my father throughout this beautiful film, and it is finally something that myself and my children and their children can be proud of forever.”