Rocketman Soars

Paramount Pictures

There is nothing new in Rocketman. Check every biopic of every movie star, rock star, sports star, literary star, maybe even business & finance and you will find elements of Rocketman. The father who doesn’t show his son any love, the mother who demeans him, the super supportive granny. There’s sex, drugs, rock and roll. You’ve got self-discovery, self-hatred, and self-deception. There’s even an abusive lover. And, finally, we see redemption. Every single cliché you can find in a biopic can be found in Rocketman. It is familiar territory, so audiences don’t have to work hard, won’t have to think, all they need do is sit back and go along for the Ride of Clichés. So when you’re telling a story about a famous person and that story is chock a block full of clichés, what do you do?

You tell the story in a completely thrilling, smile-inducing, exciting manner that befits the originality of your flamboyant protagonist.

When writer Lee Hall and director Dexter Fletcher sat down for their first meeting about the movie Rocketman they surely said to each other ‘Let’s make a movie that’s fun, let’s make a movie that’s not boring, let’s make a movie that represents Elton John.’ So they did. Instead of creating just another linear, boring biopic, they made a two-hour music video. I know, right? How appropriate. Rocketman is a good old fashioned rock and roll musical. It’s like these men binge watched Tommy, Moulin Rouge, Xanadu, Purple Rain, and Velvet Goldmine then jumped off the high dive together and when they emerged from the water they held in their hands Rocketman.

I walked into the cinema with no skin in the Rocketman game. I have liked Elton John’s music but I haven’t been a big enough fan to buy all the records, indeed I don’t think I can sing along to many of his hit songs. I have liked Taron Egerton in two movies (Eddie the Eagle and the awful Robin Hood) but I missed the Kingsman movies and his other pictures. I knew nothing about Sir Elton’s life, and that makes me the perfect audience member. I imagine I know just as much about Elton John as the average moviegoer: ‘Crocodile Rock’, ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’, ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’, ‘Your Song’ and ‘Benny and the Jets’. So the burning question was: If I were a random person off the street stumbling into Rocketman would the storytelling, would the filmmaking engage me, entertain me, keep me in my seat and keep me awake? The answer to every one of these questions is yes.

The filmmaking is so enjoyable that I didn’t even notice that it was two hours long. As a matter of fact, when the film ended I wished there were more of it. The stylish feast of audio and visual opulence is a candid look into John’s life, without being coy about his homosexuality and all of his addictions – after all, at this stage of his life Sir Elton (now 72 and living his best life) has no reason for pretense, so (as executive producer of the film) he may as well tell all the truths. Interestingly, the film manages to show those truths without alienating audiences. The sex scenes are artful and accurate without becoming graphic, while the drug and orgiastic partying scenes appear as fluid and interpretive as a Travis Wall piece on So You Think You Can Dance.

The storyline of Rocketman is simple enough. The young boy who is a piano prodigy grows into a young man with a savant-esque gift for creating music mere moments after being presented with a lyric, and after a few years of struggle with his best friend/writing partner Bernie Taupin, becomes the biggest star in the world. Along the way he sheds his shy skin for a more flamboyant one, to the dismay of a self-centered mother and an absent father, so he turns to all things addictive, including a Machiavellian music manager who takes advantage of him in every way possible, until our protagonist hits rock bottom, must clean himself up and claw his way back. It’s like watching A Star Is Born with Taron Egerton as both Ally and Jackson Maine, complete with Lady Gaga’s wardrobe, only audiences can sing along with the music and nobody dies.

Paramount Pictures

An important key to the success of the storytelling is a cast of incredibly likable actors, even the ones playing less than likable roles. The always spectacular Bryce Dallas Howard is spot-on perfect as Elton’s mom, having transformed herself yet again for a role and nailing the English accent, as well as the judgment one would expect from this character. Gemma Jones is lovely as the Granny who always cheers our hero on — it’s the kind of heartwarming performance that audiences have come to expect from her. Richard Madden makes a striking appearance as the sexy, sneaky, sketchy villain of the piece, even if I couldn’t always decipher what he was saying with his thick Scottish brogue, but who needs to understand him as long as he just keeps that voice of his coming. Indeed there are moments of such personal acting choices in some of the scenes between Madden and Egerton that my heart was rather racing and I began to feel a bit like a peeper, or a creeper, or both.

Especially wonderful in the film is Jamie Bell, whose Bernie Taupin is exactly the person we would wish on the winsome young Elton (whose name when they meet is Reg Dwight). Watching Bell and Egerton together it is easy to get a sense that the two artists have a real affection for one another, for it is in this onscreen relationship that the viewer sees the greatest chemistry, and since Bernie refers to Elton as his brother more than once, that is precisely as it should be. Since the moment the world saw Bell as young Billy Elliot he has been a constant source of poetry onscreen, never once showing a false moment in his work, and while Egerton gets the Herculean task of bringing the bombastic Elton to life, Bell acts as incomparable ballast, keeping the relationship real, the story relatable and the characters accessible. It’s an eloquent and heart-touching performance.

As for our leading man, Taron Egerton has mastered the impossible: he has contained Elton John. In a move that takes a truly impressive talent, Egerton brings forth the real Reg, all the pain and longing in his eyes, while simultaneously showcasing the grandiosity of Elton. It is a mind-blowing performance the like of which garners award nominations and trips to a psychoanalyst. How Mr. Egerton managed the bipolar nature of presenting all the emotions felt between the pillar that is Elton and the post that is Reg is admirable and amazing. It’s a star turn that leaves audiences in love with both sides of the legend because, even at his most obnoxious, strung out melodramatic, we never stop liking Elton, never stop wanting him to win, never stop cheering for him. We love him the way we love the longshot athlete who wins out in the end of a sports movie, and in the triumphant final scenes of Rocketman I felt that feeling I get when watching one of those sports movies that I love so much.

It should not go unsaid that, even while turning in this spellbinding and nuanced acting performance, Taron Egerton is providing all of the vocals in Rocketman. That doesn’t happen every day. I could bore you with the list of actors who have made biography movies about famous musicians while lip-syncing to the original artists’ music but I think it is more important to say it again: Taron Egerton is providing all of the vocals in Rocketman.

Rocketman is not auteur filmmaking. This is filmmaking for the masses, and as such, it will appeal to the masses, just as Elton John himself has for most of his adult life. The movie doesn’t ever pretend to be more than it is: a truthful, fantastical, epic, musical biopic of a larger than life person – one with whom we can identify, even though few of us have lived lives that make it remotely possible to relate to this leading character. But there is a little bit of Reg, a little bit of Elton in us all. And if there were a biopic of your life wouldn’t you want it to be a truthful, fantastical, epic, musical in which the camera lens makes everything look like a music video?

I would too.

Rocketman has a run time of 2 hours 1 minutes and is rated R for language throughout, some drug use and sexual content.