IronWatcher’s review published on Letterboxd:
Watched on Amazon Prime
For a long time I was looking forward to the Elton John Biopic "Rocketman" and gave it preference over "Bohemian Rhapsody", which is also celebrated and also - at least on the last few meters - staged by Dexter Fletcher. But I was too curious about the performance by Taron Egerton alone, who himself performs countless Elton John classics, while the round dance as such can be seen more as a musical than as a music film, and as is well known, I'm not the only one who has been interested in musicals.
And if you now think that Fletcher - who, after "Eddie the Eagle", is shooting here for the second time with Egerton in the leading role - had to limit himself in terms of staging because Biopic is based solely on songs by Elton John, you underestimate the manifold work that the exceptional artist has created over the course of decades. And so the director and his screenwriter Lee Hall always find the right pieces, the right words, to accompany the childhood, youth, rise, fall and purification of the eccentric musician.
The production can be described as idiosyncratic and mocks common conventions in some places, which unfortunately can't be said dramaturgically, but as a voluptuous-orgiastic work Rocketman still convinces in most moments. Starting with a self-help group, where Elton John in his usual eccentric costume hits the ground to confess to extensive alcohol and drug consumption, the narrative first takes us back to the childhood of the boy, whose civil name is Reggie Dwight, and unfortunately, a few clichés are used with regard to his loveless and joyless parental home, his exuberant but unrecognized musical talent and the like.
But Fletcher doesn't intend to stay there for long anyway and already here you as a viewer are prepared for how the movie lets years pass by in an associative, at times erratic way and illustrates this with only one single cut, so that you suddenly find yourself confronted with Elton portrayed by Taron Egerton. And he, as is already clear from the first song and dance performance, is not only the heart of the film, but an undisputed highlight, who with every pore of his being transforms into the musician and artist and makes him his own in an inimitable way.
As inspiring as Egerton's performance and the electrifying, fast-paced, opulent staging may be, Rocketman on the other hand gives away dramatic potential at times, because you don't want to get so close to the person behind the art figure Elton John and even if you get what you didn't know anyway in one way or another, nobody should expect to get a deeper insight into the character of Reggie Dwight. On the one hand, he limits himself to platitudes or even takes liberties, like the fact that John Lennon inspired him to his stage name, although it was actually the singer Long John Baldry. Also otherwise Fletcher and Hall sometimes go astray in favour of effect and impact, whereby one can look at them most of the time without hesitation, because the film is indeed a single, sumptuous and ostentatious round dance, which not least thanks to the many iconic, well-known songs, always knows how to carry you away and for example in "Your Song" is so touching as in the interpretation by Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge.
Nevertheless, the formula doesn't always work out and sometimes it drifts off into the pathetic, which is especially noticeable in the last third, especially since it's not always the right approach to lift the events out of reality into the surrealistically excessive.
However, these are all rather small stumbling blocks that prevent Rocketman from becoming an instant cult movie, but don't change the fact that it is still an incredibly worthwhile, self-confidently stubborn movie, which doesn't necessarily have much new to tell about Elton John as a person, in his way of performing, however, noticeably breathes the spirit of his art, which brings us back to Taron Egerton, to whom this circumstance can be blamed without hesitation, even if the other roles would have been no less renowned and successfully cast. There is Jamie Bell as Elton's best - and only - friend Bernie Taupin, who is pleasantly reserved, Richard Madden as calculating manager John Reid, who is wonderfully mean and cold, and last but not least Bryce Dallas Howard , who appears here as Reggie's mother Sheila.
Despite dramaturgical omissions and simplifications, despite the fact that the film basically illuminates only one epoch in the life of the artist and yet focuses very much on his Sturm-und-Drang period in the 70s and 80s, Dexter Fletcher's version of Elton John's life manages to come across as bright and shrill and loud as the musician himself, which makes it not exactly outstanding narratively, but still lets it remain an intoxicating audiovisual film.
To read my review right after the cinema visit, feel free to click here: boxd.it/J0ryz
