Playing air guitar on a rollicking Hunk of Love, clowning around in rehearsals, hobnobbing backstage with Cary Grant and Sammy Davis Jr — Elvis Presley is seen at his most relaxed and volcanically charismatic in this concert documentary from Baz Luhrmann. The early Seventies was a time of resurgence for the singer as he returned to live performance after years of making awful movies. “Hollywood’s image of me was wrong,” he says over a clip of him acting opposite a man in a dog suit.

Luhrmann’s film is based on footage shot at the International Hotel in Las Vegas and elsewhere that lay in a salt mine in Kansas for 50 years before being unearthed for research during the Australian director’s Elvis biopic.

It’s been spruced up by Peter Jackson’s digital wizards in New Zealand, who performed similar duties on Jackson’s Beatles documentary Get Back, and now every sequin and bead of sweat pops and Presley’s mascara glistens like frost on a tree. Luhrmann has never been one for a muted palette and he takes full advantage of his subject‘s penchant for psychedelic shirts, baby-pink towels and lilac-lensed sunglasses.

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The sound is as vivid as the visuals and Presley’s stagecraft radiates confidence, honed by a schedule that sometimes involved three shows a day. Highlights include a tumultuous Suspicious Minds, a transcendent rendition of the gospel standard Oh Happy Day and a casually brilliant take on the Beatles’ Something (“very suggestive lyrics, man”).

EPiC also paints Presley as an incorrigible goofer, growling “I feel like Bob Dylan slept in my mouth”, mercilessly teasing his backing singers and wearing his shades upside down, Dennis Taylor-style.

Luhrmann can be mischievous too: footage of Colonel Tom Parker, Presley’s forbidding manager, is accompanied by Elvis singing You’re the Devil in Disguise. There’s no exploration of the singer’s questionable love life but if you want that you can watch the excellent Priscilla. This is a celebration of the King doing what he did best, and loving every second.
★★★★☆
12A, 90min
Exclusively in Imax Feb 20, in cinemas everywhere Feb 27

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