I was completely bored for the first hour of this movie. To be honest, Winkler does very little in the beginning to make the story interesting. The initial interactions between Byron and Elvis seemed one dimensional and uninteresting, and absolutely nothing made Byron Gruman endearing as a character Until well past the first hour. Keitel was, of course, good in his role but Schaech was stiff and the direction was actually quite bad in places. Bridget Fonda plays a somewhat endearing Marilyn Monroe impersonator, only annoying while her character is "in character." Truth be told I was tempted to turn the movie off halfway through it and go on to one of the other titles I had rented for the weekend. I am glad I did not. The movie is entertaining for the last 45 minutes and toward the end Schaech finally reaches down deep to pull off a rather heartwarming performance. This is a multi-faceted story of redemption, with every character eventually finding something they had needed all along. Finding Graceland is most definitely worth the price of a video rental so long as you can stand a long and often boring buildup. In the end the story aptly uses the growing mythology of The King to tell a story that is worth the time it takes to hear it.
Review of Finding Graceland
