Quirky little indie films often leave me cold, but sometimes they work and I enjoy them. ELVIS AND ANABELLE is definitely quirky. Max Minghella plays Elvis, a young man who has secretly taken over his father’s undertaking business when his dad (played by the great Joe Mantegna) suffers a brain injury that leaves him unable to work. Blake Lively is Anabelle, a local beauty queen who collapses on stage right after winning a pageant and dies. Or does she? Elvis is about to embalm her when she suddenly comes back to life on the table. A predictably oddball romance between them is the result. Although they try to keep it a secret, eventually it comes out and causes much hoopla, most of it generated by Anabelle’s mother (Mary Steenburgen) and her stepfather (Keith Carradine).
As you can see, for an indie film this movie has a pretty darned good cast, and they all do excellent jobs. The script by Will Geiger, who also directed, is humorous, poignant, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. Some pretty dark stuff is hinted at, but it never quite goes there, and the ending is more satisfying than I expected it to be.
ELVIS AND ANABELLE was filmed in Texas, mostly around Austin and in the town of Lockhart, with a few scenes on South Padre Island. As soon as I saw the courthouse square in Lockhart, I knew it had to be in Texas, although I didn’t recognize it. My father and a friend of his owned the radio station in Lockhart 50-some-odd years ago when it first went on the air. KHRB, it was called, for Heath/Reasoner Broadcasting. I spent quite a bit of time there and was even an unpaid helper around the station for a while, but I haven’t been back to Lockhart since 1972, so I’m not surprised I didn’t recognize it. But Texas courthouses have a distinctive look.
Now that I’ve digressed, let me say that ELVIS AND ANABELLE is definitely worth watching, in my opinion. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
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