This film is like a jigsaw puzzle put together with the pieces from 5 different boxes, so nothing fits together and the end result is an awkward mess. Box #1 is a darkly comic take on the Elvis impersonator phenomenon and the pathetic people who take it way too seriously. Box #2 is a plaintive spin on a woman looking for love after a lifetime consumed by her job as a cosmetics saleswoman. The third set of pieces are about that same woman's odd relationship with Elvis Pressley, complete with flashbacks to Elvis-involved moments from her childhood and an internal monologue where she talks to The King like he was her guardian angel. Even more parts of the story revolve around the struggles of an advertising executive trying to do his job with some creative integrity, of all things, and appear to be in the movie solely because Sean Astin, of all people, agreed to take a supporting role. And the fifth concept that got chopped up and ungracefully jammed into Elvis Has Left The Building is two FBI agents straight out of an off Broadway revival of The Odd Couple. Oh, and there's a gay character who would have been a boring stereotype in 1994, let alone a decade later when this thing was made.
Harmony Jones (Kim Basinger) is a traveling saleswoman on a tour of the Great American Southwest, trying to recruit other women to start pushing Pink Lady Cosmetics. A childhood encounter with Elvis has left her with a lifelong, emotional bond with the music legend that starts sweet and turns satirical when Harmony starts running into Elvis impersonators as they accidentally kill themselves. That's what brings in two mismatched federal agents (Mike Starr and Phill Lewis) to investigate the death spree. There's also the handsome ad man (John Corbett) on his way to Las Vegas to drop off his soon-to-be-ex-wife's Elvis costume who runs into Harmony and instantly chases after her like a starving dog after a pound of hamburger. The ad man is also constantly on the phone with his assistant in New York (Sean Astin), arguing over how trashy a new campaign should be.
Kim Basinger always has a certain appeal and if someone with some talent had been brought in to radically rewrite this horrible script, taking Harmony, John Corbett's character and the whole Elvis motif and excising pretty much everything else, maybe director Joel Zwick could have used that to make a romantic comedy that didn't stink on ice. Elvis Has Left The Building is so inept, I'd bet money that it never occurred to credited writers Mitchell Ganem and Adam-Michael Garber how much the name Harmony Jones sounds like something out of 1970s "blaxploitation" flick. Their plot is dependent on people behaving like morons. They wouldn't know a good joke if it landed on their head like an Acme anvil squashing Wile E. Coyote. At least 50% of the scenes they've written here should have never been shot, forget about left on the cutting room floor.
Normally, a bad movie has several bad things about it. Elvis Has Left The Building has only one flaw but this awful script is so terrible that it drags everything else down like cement shoes on a Mafia informant. If you ever wanted evidence that no one in the movie business knows a good screenplay from a bad one, look no further. Not that you should actually watch this fiasco, of course.
Harmony Jones (Kim Basinger) is a traveling saleswoman on a tour of the Great American Southwest, trying to recruit other women to start pushing Pink Lady Cosmetics. A childhood encounter with Elvis has left her with a lifelong, emotional bond with the music legend that starts sweet and turns satirical when Harmony starts running into Elvis impersonators as they accidentally kill themselves. That's what brings in two mismatched federal agents (Mike Starr and Phill Lewis) to investigate the death spree. There's also the handsome ad man (John Corbett) on his way to Las Vegas to drop off his soon-to-be-ex-wife's Elvis costume who runs into Harmony and instantly chases after her like a starving dog after a pound of hamburger. The ad man is also constantly on the phone with his assistant in New York (Sean Astin), arguing over how trashy a new campaign should be.
Kim Basinger always has a certain appeal and if someone with some talent had been brought in to radically rewrite this horrible script, taking Harmony, John Corbett's character and the whole Elvis motif and excising pretty much everything else, maybe director Joel Zwick could have used that to make a romantic comedy that didn't stink on ice. Elvis Has Left The Building is so inept, I'd bet money that it never occurred to credited writers Mitchell Ganem and Adam-Michael Garber how much the name Harmony Jones sounds like something out of 1970s "blaxploitation" flick. Their plot is dependent on people behaving like morons. They wouldn't know a good joke if it landed on their head like an Acme anvil squashing Wile E. Coyote. At least 50% of the scenes they've written here should have never been shot, forget about left on the cutting room floor.
Normally, a bad movie has several bad things about it. Elvis Has Left The Building has only one flaw but this awful script is so terrible that it drags everything else down like cement shoes on a Mafia informant. If you ever wanted evidence that no one in the movie business knows a good screenplay from a bad one, look no further. Not that you should actually watch this fiasco, of course.