Movie Reviews : A Lot of Vancancies in ‘Heartbreak Hotel’

Elvis Presley, Tupelo rebel--swivel-hipped, sideburned centerpole of rock ‘n’ roll--is such an American icon, you can understand why writer-director Chris Columbus thought “Heartbreak Hotel” (citywide) would work.

Columbus tries to construct a fairy tale in which The King, pulled down from his lofty 1972 Las Vegas-era isolation, mingles with a small-town teen-ager and his beleaguered family. The movie’s Elvis--played by David Keith in waxy makeup and Elvis pompadours--is like a fairy-tale prince, bringing bliss to everyone and leaving in a blaze of foggy “Casablanca” glory.

Superficially, this doesn’t seem such a bad notion: a Cinder-Elvis story, with lots of undiluted Presley on the sound track. The overall ambiance is Spielberg small-town, sugary grandiosity. There’s a gentle satire in some of the scenes--like the one where Elvis paces his hotel suite, yearning for a cheeseburger.

But “Heartbreak Hotel” is such a bad idea, nothing can rescue it, not even Georges Delerue’s music or Keith’s impersonation of The King. Keith, all wrong in close-up, does an acceptable impersonation of Presley’s husky baritone. (Actual Presley numbers are heard, incidentally, and under the credits.) And in long shots he has the loose, stylized gestures down. You almost believe him.

What you cannot believe, not for a moment, is the preposterous farrago of demented fantasy, saccharine melodrama and ludicrous schmaltz Columbus has come up with for a story. “Heartbreak Hotel” is a real groaner.

Wish fulfillment here runs amok. Young Johnny Wolfe (Charlie Schlatter, in a part that seems intended for Michael J. Fox) is spurned by the high school talent show judges, worried about his self-destructive Elvis-loving mother (Tuesday Weld). What does he do? He kidnaps Elvis at a Cleveland concert date by luring The King from his hotel, chloroforming him and driving him off at gunpoint in a pink Cadillac.

That may be bad enough, but even more astonishing is Elvis’ reaction after waking up in Spielburg. Unfazed by Johnny’s gun, The King is about to wander off when a couple of well-thrown sneers by Johnny stop him in his tracks.

Stung, Elvis immediately calls up his handlers and cancels his whole schedule. He dates Johnny’s mother, almost unrecognized. Overcome with generosity, he helps repaint, refurnish and redecorate the Wolfe house, advises Johnny on his love life, and tries to offer a few pointers to the garage band. Finally, The King decides to join the band and tear up the high school talent show.

What is Columbus thinking of? When he wrote “Gremlins” and “Young Sherlock Holmes” for Spielberg, Columbus seemed on top of the formulas. Here, the spirit is soggy and the formulas are drowning him.

“Heartbreak Hotel” is a terrific example of the age of superhero overkill in ‘80s movies. Columbus and company achieve an almost perfect fiasco: the kind of soggy old fossil of a movie that needs a few good blasts of “Jailhouse Rock” to blow it right down to the ground.