The Couch Critic
The Couch Critic is your laid-back guide to movies and TV shows that deserve your attention—or maybe don’t. Nathan dives deep into storytelling, character development, and cinematic style with a sharp eye and a wry sense of humor. Whether it’s a blockbuster hit, a hidden gem, or a cult classic, Nathan’s relatable approach ensures every episode feels like a cozy chat with a friend who just happens to love film. Perfect for casual watchers and cinephiles alike, The Couch Critic brings thoughtful critique without the fluff. Grab your favorite snack, settle in, and let Nathan guide you through the world of screen entertainment.
The Couch Critic
Unveiling the Icons: A Cinematic Exploration of 'Priscilla' and 'Elvis'
Ever wondered why the movie Priscilla was released a year after the Elvis film? Curious about the motivations behind the change in title? Join us, Natey and Katy, on a thrilling cinematic journey as we unravel the truths and myths surrounding these two iconic films. We share our personal views on the TV miniseries Elvis and Me and discuss the age difference between the King of Rock and Roll and his wife. Feel the magic of the soundtrack and hear our take on the actors' portrayals, especially that of the King himself.
But there's more to the story. We dissect the intriguing reasons behind the release of Priscilla post-Elvis's death and what it signifies. The actor hunt for the perfect Elvis look-alike, the depiction of the King's life through Priscilla's lens, and the enigmatic backstory of the release will be on our discussion roster. Join us as we contrast and compare the performances of the actors who held the daunting task of playing Elvis and Priscilla. It’s a riveting blend of speculation, appreciation, and cinematic storytelling that you won't want to miss.
One's a movie buff, one watches movies, just enough. Together, fun will be had by all. This is Nady and Katie at the Movies. Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new episode of Nady and Katie at the Movies. I'm your host, nathan, aka Nady, of course, and with me this time is my good friend Katie. Hi, katie, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm great I missed you, but I did not miss you as much as I was glad to not see Five Nights at Freddy's.
Speaker 1:Judson and I really enjoyed the film. So if you want to know our thoughts, go ahead and give that a listen. But today's episode I'm super excited about because we're talking about someone who I'm a big fan of music, wise, not always a big fan of his life and what he did and things like that. We're talking about the movie Priscilla, based on the book Elvis and Me, which was a 1988 TV miniseries. So for some reason they thought it would be a good idea to rehash this story again, which ironically, is a year after the movie Elvis came out. So we'll talk about my thoughts on the why they released it at this time, the backstory of everything. But before we can talk about any of that, I've got to go over the synopsis.
Speaker 1:When teenage Priscilla Bullio meets Elvis Presley, the man who was already a rock and roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments, a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. Priscilla stars Kaylee Spaney, jacob El Rado. There's some weird name people in this movie, so I'm not even going to try to pronounce their names. So, like I said, priscilla is based on the tell all book by Priscilla Presley that was written back in 1985. And then, three years later they decided to make a movie out of it TV movie 1988. And then they decided, a year after the Elvis movie, they would make Priscilla. So, katie, you weren't able to actually see Priscilla. That's right, but I did share a link to, because the TV mini series is there on YouTube for you to watch if you want to go watch it.
Speaker 1:It's about all three hours a little three hours long because it was a TV mini series. So I'm pretty sure it wasn't shown, you know, for full three hours when it was first on TV. I'm pretty sure it was like a mini series. So what were your thoughts based on that version of Elvis and me, which, ironically, was named Elvis and me?
Speaker 2:I am in the state of Graceland, tennessee, so I just have trouble believing that it's not being played more places. However, yes, I did watch Elvis and me and it is interesting that you caught that. The title change that Elvis and me definitely has a ring to her understanding of where she fell in importance and Priscilla is saying you know the stories All about me and Elvis is the side character, the movie. I thought the movie was really good. It was really long, but I really loved Learning things that I had no idea. I mean, I had hunches.
Speaker 2:But I'm gonna be honest, I'm the opposite of you, nathan, in terms of Elvis fan. Like I know barely anything. I know some of his songs, but like I don't know much at all about his life. I didn't even remember how he died and I had no idea that his. I know it seems silly, but I had no idea that his wife, priscilla he had met when she was 14 years old and I don't even know what were the laws at the time. Was that illegal? Maybe that's why everyone was trying to arrest him in the movie Elvis.
Speaker 1:It's something that majority of Elvis fans Already knew about this guy. Now I will say, when the book came out, I don't know how many people knew about that. When the TV mini series came out, I don't know how many people knew about that. But the fact that those two things already exist, that information is already out there. The movie Priscilla doesn't really add anything Shocking new. Oh my gosh, I didn't know. He treated her like I mean, we all know that he had a bad temper all those things that were in the TV mini series and the book and also the Elvis movie that came out last year. So I'm gonna go to my likes before we dive even more into this movie. My likes for Priscilla is the soundtrack.
Speaker 1:What I thought was interesting about this movie is that they didn't really use Much Elvis songs. I believe in the Elvis of me they used a ton of Elvis songs and and the Elvis movie. Obviously they used a ton of Elvis songs, but they strategically chose not to use that many Elvis songs, if any at all. That I can recall In the Priscilla movie. I don't know if that was because, again, the focus was supposed to be Priscilla, which I also thought was kind of funny that there was an Elvis movie last year and now this year's there's Priscilla, but I thought the soundtrack was really cool. They used you know songs during that time period. I did think it was an interesting choice not to use Any songs by the king of rock and roll.
Speaker 1:Another big like for me is the actor who played Elvis sounded almost Like him. It was insane. I some people are complaining about that. He was mumbling a little bit, but if you, if you listen to how Elvis spoke early on, he was very shy, he was very. He didn't know how to handle being famous and I think that's how he was his entire career. He didn't know how to Handle the weight of his fame and so he always came off as kind of a shy Guy, even though he was this big star. And the way this guy Portrayed Elvis in this movie I thought was, I thought was phenomenal, I thought, ironically enough, I thought he was the highlight and the actress who played Priscilla was kind of, and that goes into my dislikes.
Speaker 1:I stated before there's nothing new in this movie. There's nothing. There's nothing that, oh true, elvis fans don't already know. So it really is confusing to me why Sophia Coppola and Priscilla Presley, who obviously had a big hand in this, they decided to release this movie. I don't understand. I have ideas which I can get into, but Overall I don't under. I don't understand why this movie was released and made.
Speaker 2:Well, and before, before you go into your dislikes, I do want to ask because I was unable to see Priscilla. I was, I did as much as I could to watch, like you know, as many extended trailers as I could get as much little snippets of it, and I had just watched the Elvis and me on YouTube and I was. I had to keep going back. I was like, are these verbatim lines? I mean, it sounds, it seemed like the script even. It was so exact. So it really does beg the question like why? Why did we need to remake it In a maybe more artistic tone? I do agree with you. I think it's great that they I didn't use a lot of Elvis. Speaking of the Elvis movie, I just watched that to kind of prep for this episode for the first time and I thought it was a really good movie, very artistic.
Speaker 2:And my least favorite part of the Elvis movie was actually the music. I did not like all that integration of new like the new pop, like it took me out of it. There's like Nicki Minaj and just like at the end and the credits, there's this like really weird rapper that comes in on the song in the ghetto and it's just like not flowing on them. I couldn't. I kept thinking is there someone listening to music behind me, like because it's not for the movie? Anyway, I really like that choice and it sounds very intentional for music. So my question to you is is there any differences that you noticed?
Speaker 1:I haven't watched Elvis and me the TV mini series in a while, so I don't remember it fully, but what I remembered about it as I was watching Priscilla, I was like this is the same thing. It's the same thing. I kind of felt like Will Ferrell and Zoolander, you know, it's the same. Look, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Speaker 2:They have to be the same movie because if they can't both be based on the same book unless they're identical, Well, and then it goes back to my point then why make this movie?
Speaker 1:There's already a TV mini series which I, from what I remember, I think the actress who plays Priscilla and the TV movie does a really good job, and I think she even looks like her Suzanne Walters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she looks like her a lot more than the actress that they have in Priscilla. This is kind of going on a sidetrack, but I think it's funny that almost every movie about Elvis they can never find an actor that looks exactly like him, which you know. Elvis had a very distinct look and so it's very hard to find you know someone who looks like him. But this guy in Priscilla sounded almost exactly like him, and Austin Butler and the Elvis movie I thought was phenomenal when it came to his voice. And I think when you get the voice down it really doesn't matter if you look like him or not, because what I found with Austin Butler is that as the movie progressed his mannerisms were Elvis, his voice was Elvis, and so to me he became Elvis. Whether he looked like him or not At some point in the movie, it didn't matter to me because he was Elvis. And that's kind of how I felt with this guy in Priscilla. He didn't really look like him, and neither did the guy in the Elvis and Me mini series. So there's just this thing about hey, we're going to cast an Elvis but it's not going to look like him, and either you don't care or the guy's just really good with mannerisms and voice, and that's what I found in this movie. So my last dislike for the Priscilla movie is that it was just boring. I think it was because I had already seen it before and I tried really hard to like it because, as an Elvis fan, I I try to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1:I just don't understand why this movie was made. I don't understand why it was released. But this also gets to my theories of why it was released. There's a backstory. There's a backstory of Priscilla Presley.
Speaker 1:Now, for the longest time she was in charge of Elvis Presley Enterprises when Elvis passed away, I guess he left it to her and so she was in charge of, you know, keeping the Elvis legacy alive. Well, just a few years ago she kind of lost the rights to that. And so now her granddaughter, the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley, who passed away, I believe last year sadly, who was actually very against the Priscilla movie being released. She disliked the script entirely. She even contacted Sophia Coppola telling her that she would have to speak against the film when it was released and go against Sophia Coppola and her mother because of the way they were portraying her father.
Speaker 1:Now some people say they're portraying her father the way he was, and of course his daughter is not going to like the way he's being portrayed, which I can. I can understand, you know, again, I'm not condoning the fact that he was 24, 25 and she was a 14 year old girl. It's gross, it's weird and in today's society Obviously he would be, I guess, canceled because of that, and so I Can understand why she would be against it too, because she doesn't want her father's legacy to be tarnished. But I don't think it will, because majority of Elvis fans know this about him.
Speaker 2:So I don't think this movie is the only thing, though, is is does the movie because the movie is not three hours long, they obviously didn't include everything from the original movie. So did it focus way more on that aspect? Because I felt like the 1988 version focused a lot more on the drug use and the infidelity, like once they were already married, and I feel like that was a lot of the decline where he looked like a like he. He didn't in any way come across as pervy in the Original movie. In fact, you can kind of defend him to say she said you need to meet my parents and he said okay, he's, and he's had a sit down with her father and mother, like if it was so inappropriate at the time. I don't think that a general in the Arab, a colonel in the army, would like sit down across from this man and approve of him hanging out with his daughter. So I don't know. So was Priscilla Focused a lot more on that aspect than the drug use and then fidelity? I Mean.
Speaker 1:I think they they focus a little bit on it. I mean, obviously it wasn't as heavy-handed as I was actually expecting. I was expecting this movie to really Lean heavy on the fact that he was a 20-something guy and she was a 14-year-old girl. Obviously they mentioned it, you know. His friends around him was like oh, she's just a little baby, she's, you know. And even he says that. Elvis Presley says that when he finds out that she's a ninth grader, he's like oh man, oh man, You're just a baby, you know, and so like. There are moments where you kind of cringe, you're like that's, that's weird dude.
Speaker 1:Like what, why are you checking out a 14-year-old girl? But then you what you said, why, what, why didn't her parents say anything? And I'm sure they probably did like a little bit, but then, who knows why, they decided to let her Go to Graceland, you know, and live there, like, live with him, and you know there's a lot of questions that will probably never be answered and it's just, it's just weird that this movie was released. I just keep going back to that because we have the TV miniseries. We have what I think was a phenomenal Film last year. If I was to rate that, I would give that a six out of six. I just thought it was fantastic.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people didn't like Tom Hanks's Colonel, tom Parker, but I didn't care because the movie was about Elvis, that's what the movie was called, and I think Tom Hanks did a fine job. I mean, a majority of Elvis fans know that Tom Parker was a jerk and held Elvis back from what he really wanted to do. So I thought that movie just did a really good job and just a really quick. Thing about the music, the reason they use modern stuff I don't know if you're familiar with Boz Lerman, the director. He did Mulan Rouge, he did the Leonardo Caprio, romeo and Juliet, so he's very well known to use modern songs in his movies. But I do agree I didn't like the random Nicki Minaj rap stuff and Elvis movie it, yeah, like you said, it fell out of place.
Speaker 1:But we're talking about Priscilla, so I basically gave all my likes my dislikes. Another dislike is I mentioned before, I didn't really like the actress who played Priscilla. I don't know if it was the script, because Priscilla came off as whiny, sometimes a very nagging person, and so did Elvis, and so they, they. It just showed the whole time like their marriage was just why did they ever get married? But then you see a movie like Elvis and it portrays them as a loving married couple majority of the time and it doesn't really touch base on the hardships. Obviously it shows the drug use, which again is things that most Elvis fans know. So I I hate to say it again I don't know why this movie was made and so I guess we could go right into my rating. But, katie, if you were to rate Elvis and me, the mini series, what would you give it all over three hours worth.
Speaker 2:Right, right, well, I feel like I have better things to say about that than that you have for Priscilla. I did have one more question. I know that I'm not ranking Priscilla as I did not see it, but I will ask my question after. I rate Elvis and me Was long. I don't know that it was like the best acting ever. He's definitely not the best Elvis, but I thought she was an incredible like she was fantastic In that movie as Priscilla, and so I would probably give it a five, maybe even five, yeah, probably five, a five.
Speaker 2:Like I was Trying to watch it on super speed so that I could get through it but I kept slowing down, slowing down, slowing down, because I wanted to catch the parts. I think it was raw, it was real and it truly felt like I was getting a glimpse into the other side, while still having that complex Understanding of like she respected him, she was extremely hurt by him and yet she loved him and she kind of understood that she came second. Like when you have a prodigy like that, you understand like I will never be the number one love in your life, like you, or you kind of have to let. I mean, you wonder why Taylor Swift still single. I mean, she's not to get in all that, but you kind of choose a Career life and I think she understood that. So, yeah, here's my question for you before you rate Was this the same as the movie I saw?
Speaker 2:And that there's not necessarily a happy ending, because I guess the happiest ending, could think, for Priscilla was that she got out of that and was able to live another life. But is there like a Priscilla female empowerment, like what would you think that the directors are wanting us to get out of this new version of Priscilla? What's the message versus to take away?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I guess I can spoil it because I don't recommend this movie. She does, she leaves and she just drives away from Graceland and that's the end of the movie. I will say, before I rate it, it does. It does deal with like how he could be physically abusive at times which I Never really heard about that but and that he could be verbally abusive, he could be manipulative at times, he could have a short temper, which, again, these are things that most Elvis fans know about him.
Speaker 1:But I think what a lot of Elvis fans know is what was portrayed in the Elvis film. And so I don't know. And Priscilla Presley is just a very confusing person Because she releases this stuff which kind of trashes and bashes Elvis but at the same time she says I loved him and I never married again because he was my true love, and all this stuff. I'm like it's just very confusing to to me and majority of Elvis fans of. Then why would you, why would you feel the need to Put this out there and I know, I know, I know because I just watched Elvis.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it's for that money.
Speaker 1:And that's why a lot of people don't like her, because they feel like that's all she does, is she just tries to make money off the name Presley, and that's what she does. But before I give my rating, I want to give our listeners a little bit of a sneak peek of what we will be reviewing next week. So take a listen.
Speaker 3:Kale Danvers Proud of your child to the Milky Way.
Speaker 2:Nick Fury, my favorite one-eyed man of entry. How goes it out there? Cold, no air Space.
Speaker 1:Captain Marvel.
Speaker 3:The Annihilator. You took everything from me and now I'm returning the favor. What is happening to me? She's entangled our light-based powers, so we switch places whenever we use them. Strong theory you can absorb light, I can see it. And Kamala, who's Kamala? Hi? She can turn light into physical matter, which I have never heard of. I could totally show you.
Speaker 1:No, you know she's targeting every planet we call home.
Speaker 3:I would never choose to bring anybody into this. You are not the only thing standing between this and the universe. Oh my god, we're a team. Higher, further, faster. Who's that good kitty ghost? Oh my god, I can't, can you? I got it.
Speaker 1:That's right. We're going to be reviewing the newest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Marvels. Can't you tell that we're both really excited?
Speaker 2:I want to be excited. I really like the girl that was in WandaVision, but we will see. This is it's definitely going to be a chick flick superhero movie, so I'm excited to hear what Nathan Sluts are.
Speaker 1:Can't wait. But before we get to that, I got to give my rating to Priscilla and if you couldn't tell by this episode, I did not like this movie. So I'm going to give it a big old 1.5 out of 6, which I was very surprised because, again, I am an Elvis fan. Maybe it's because I am an Elvis fan and I'm not necessarily Priscilla Presley fan. And so that is Priscilla right there. So, katie, do you want to do this ending or do you want me to?
Speaker 2:Because I'm a bigger Elvis fan. I think that you, the biggest Elvis fan, got to give us your best Elvis impersonation.
Speaker 3:Are you lonesome tonight Do? You miss me tonight, then why would you make this film?
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Naty and Katie at the Movies. Feel free to leave us a review so people can find the show. Follow us on all our social media platforms and if there's a movie that you want us to watch, feel free to contact us at natyandkatyatgmailcom. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
