Year: 2019
Director: Dexter Fletcher
Director Dexter Fletcher (aka Baby Face from Bugsy Malone aka Spike from Press Gang) infamously came in to complete the Queen biopic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ after Bryan Singer was shown the door. Its hard to tell how much impact he had on the films tone etc but in ‘Rocketman’ he’s only made the film that Bohemian Rhapsody could have been.
The biggest problem I had with “Bo Rhap” is that it was dull. Not the factual innacuracies, not Rami Maliks prosthetics not the lumpen script that ticked every cliche. The last thing, like them or loathe them, that Queen were was humdrum and ordinary – ok maybe John Deacon – but that film made their extravagant, outrageous, ego bomb of a frontman into a most ordinary man.
The main advantage that this Elton biopic has is that it isn’t one. The subtitle is ‘based on a true fantasy’ and if anything it is a musical based on Elton Johns life. You could easily see this leading to a show in the West end. It has characters singing at each other, expressing thier feelings through lyrics that are anachronistic to the events portrayed – 2001’s ‘I Want Love’ sungs by an 8 year old Elton, his mum, dad and nan.
Like the Queen flick there are set pieces like the infamous Troubador shows in August 1970, Dodgers Stadium in 1975, Royal Variety in 1972 but they aren’t faithful recrations like the Live Aid climax to the Queen film. There is an infamous shot from the Troubadour of Elton with legs flailing behind him like he is levitating. The film takes that moment and turns it up to 10 as Taron Egerton’s Elton takes in the moment in slow motion as the crowd rise off the ground with him before slamming back to earth into ‘Crocodile Rock’ . It doesn’t matter that he didn’t play that song at that gig and wouldn’t record it for 2 years – as part of the fantastical nature of the film which has already seen a ten year old Reggie Dwight banging out ‘Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting’ on the pub joanna
Edgerton is absolutely terrific as Elton – the little twitches, shy smiles and frowns are just as vital as the OTT concert performances and tantrums. I had a problem with Richard Madden as his manager / lover John Reid as I couldn’t get the comedian talk show host Craig Ferguson out of my head every time he appeared. Jamie Bell (aka Billy Elliot – Elton of course wrote the hit musical based on the film) does a fine job as Bernie Taupin desperately trying to stop his friend and himself from disappearing down the bottom of a glass.
Thankfully there are no people wandering on in dodgy wigs to be Freddie, Rod, Mick n Keef etc although Kiki Dee does show up. His homosexuality is not avoided or toned down for a mainstream audience and neither is his failings as a person, a friend, a son and a husband (although his marriage to Renate goes from meeting to divorce in less than 5 minutes) and as he says “I started being a cunt in 1975 and I just didn’t stop”. Neither is the sliding quality of his career with ‘Victim Of Love’ chosen as the nadir which is probably the lowest point of anyone’s association with Elton.
The film is framed around Elton in an AA meeting in 1984 – dressed in a red silk diamante devil costume complete with horns and wings which he slowly sheds as he confronts his past before he struts from the room in a faithful recreation of one his most iconic videos.
Yes the film has some corny n sappy dialogue, is sugary enough at points to give you Type II and it has the obligatory “Here I’ve written some lyrics, see what you can do” scene where Elton just thows together one of his signature songs. However you can forgive the film that for its fantasy sequences, playing fast and loose with reality and making the experience of being Elton John in the 1970s simultaneously wonderful and horrific.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Elton Johns music
I wasnt going to bother……I am now! Thanks
Saw it Thursday, enjoyed it, not stunning but better than the Queen flick. As mentioned its true, none of the re-writing of history of Queen. Sure, the songs are used in the wrong order but i’m now starting to realise that shouldnt held against it. Best part is the relationship between Elton and Bernie. Both actors were superb in those roles. John Reid gets the full wrath of Elton – does not come out of the movie well. Found it lost its way a little at the end and i started looking at my watch, a 7 out 10 for me. I’m a tough one to please when it comes to music movies but its a fine stab.
I see Mike Batt – who knew many of the people portrayed in the film – has absolutely slammed it, basically saying that it’s bitchy point scoring. Elton, bitchy? Who’d have thought it?
Aren’t many people of the opinion that Mike Batt is something of a knobhead?
Don’t own an Elton record, or seen a concert but never object when his stuff comes on. Think I will see this.
Here is Elton on the movie. Self-deprecation is quite funny.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/may/26/elton-john-in-my-own-words-exclusive-my-life-and-making-rocketman
Oh yeah, great review Dave. We expect nothing less.
Excellent piece. Thanks for that.
He seems like a thoroughly nice man in that piece. I like the way it isn’t an interview but a review. He’s put a lot of thought into it and good for him.
I may catch this after all. I’m not a huge fan (except for the early albums, which are really good, before all the glitz and glamour malarkey), and he is one of the few artists I have walked out on (Wembley, as did many others), but sounds interesting . My daughter saw it over the weekend (her boyfriend is a huge fan, at 32!) so will get her view too.
Thanks!
He really does seem to have huge traction (hur) with the younger generation – people too young to remember Sack-er-ree-fice, let alone Take Me To The Pilot.
Say it quietly… the shows were so much better when he was out of his mind on drink and drugs.
And the audience
You beat me to it DFB! I was finishing writing this one up when you posted your (better) review.
I think the whole supporting cast (apart from possibly Jamie Bell and Bryce Dallas Howard as Elton’s mum) were very one dimensional. As with Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, the trailer sells us a pup regarding the musical theatre – people busting into song, dancing shop assistants etc. I certainly agree that it’s a better experience than the Queen film, probably because Elton doesn’t really give a tinker’s what people think about him, then or now.
The Queen biopic has, I am reliably informed by my child-owning friends, ignited a fresh interest in Queen among the yoof who are not concerned with the historical accuracy of that film and just get excited by the music and they fall in love with Freddie which is fair enough. Will be interesting to see if this does the same for Elton. Bee Gees next surely?
Elton seems to have kept his oar in with ver kids due to things like Bob the Builder and Gnomeo & Juliet.
Oh god no. Imagine the prosthetic teeth in that.
Mrs Japanese and I watched ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ last week, and ‘Rocketman’ at the weekend and comparisons are inevitable, but I thought both were very good. I think it helps that I’m less familar with both Queen’s and Elton’s history than I am of, say, The Beatles, so I wasn’t sat there harrumphing at any historical inaccuracies.
I thought the decision to use songs to fit the context of the scene was an inspired choice, but found ending particularly schmaltzy (i.e. the scene where his past-selves and relatives appear at the AA meeting).
Two of our favourite moments in the film were the scene in which Elton looks at a photo of The Beatles on the wall of Dick James’s offices, and perhaps momentarily considers a career as Elton Ringo and (according to Mrs Japanese) the homage to that scene from ‘Trainspotting’ as ‘Rocket Man’ plays.
I’d always read young Reg took his stage name from a combination of Elton Dean and Long John Baldry, both whom he’d worked with. But Elton put his name to this film, so the Lennon pic story is either true or yet more myth making. It’s odd, as like the Queen pic, some of the more fantastical stuff IS true – in real life he was taken from pool overdose to Dodgers stadium with indecent haste, and his people were dressed as mechanics, as this clip shows.
I’m suspecting that while the modern day viewers would accept Elton Dean – after all, there he was in the film for five minutes (with repeated name check so we know who he was) – 99% of them wouldn’t know who Long John Baldry was…and it would waste valuable screen time explaining him, just to make the point that Reg changed his name, so the film makers decided to simply go with a John that most folk’d know.
Saw it on the weekend, and like it the more I reflect on it – some parts were almost Ken Russell-like in staging (OK, no flaming cellos, but still…)
Doesn’t he have a big arse?
Is Elton the Jan Molby of Rock?
Yes the AA meeting at the end with other characters appearing to say “You are a wonderful songwriter, millions of people love you etc” was several shovels of saccharine but that moment he puts on the boater and looks into camera you think “Fuck me, that’s Elton”.
He also plays ‘I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues’ and ‘Sad Songs’ at that 1969 audition just to irk the purists
The scene in which Dick James describes ‘Your Song’ as the best song he’s heard since ‘Let it Be’ is a bit like describing Gerry and the Pacemakers as the best band to come out of Liverpool since The Beatles.
And of course at this point the Beatles had completely cut all ties with Dick James after he sold his Northern Song shares without telling them
Stop giving away endings you guys!
They ruined the ending themselves by filming it, the mawkish saps
Just walked out of it after forty minutes. Awful. Just awful. Songs out of context and period. Loads of factual inaccuracies. There’s a great story to be told about Elton. This isn’t it.
Its not a biopic . Its a musical based on the life of Elton John.
*look up there – at the top*
Wish I’d known in advance. Hate musicals. Maybe it belongs on a stage.
Yes cos musicals are never big box office or popular
Sound Of Music
West Side Story
Grease
Mamma Mia
Mamma Mia 2
Sunshine On Leith
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins Returns
Chicago
Moulin Rouge
Muppet Christmas Carol
High School Musical 1-3
next time pay attention and realise the problem is you and your prejudices rather than the art
Bit harsh DFB.
The Bitch is Back
In that video up there, the bitch has got back.
Cunt. 😉
(Traditional DFB form or greeting)
I fail to see the correlation between the box office success of musicals and me not liking them. But hey. You’re the expert. I bow to the Poundland Mark Kermode.
You suggested the film belonged on the stage rather than the screen.
The problem is with you, not the film, which is fine bit not the fault of the film.
You’re right in that I should have paid more attention to reviews but I never like to read them before going to see films because, despite their best efforts, they often give away vital parts of the story. With this I thought it was going to be a biopic and so did Lady G so, again, it was probably our fault. She hates musicals too and wanted to leave after five minutes when the Boy Elton started singing ‘I Want Love’. I whispered that we should stick with it (largely because we were sat in a crowded row). But with every passing minute we both sank deeper and deeper into our seats and I groaned at the sheer horrible ‘musicalness’ of it. I, as I suggested earlier, hated the factual liberties and this too was probably down to me expecting a straighter biopic. I love Elton John and have done since I was a kid. I’m something of an Elton bore so you can imagine that, as the inaccuracies piled up, I got more and more annoyed. And I hate musicals. So yes. I should pay more attention. The word ‘fantasy’ should have alerted me…
Young people reckon it.
That’s all I need to know.
How wonderful, Deram, that there are people here who can get so enthusiastic about young people’s new favourites.
Nu grumpy curmudgeons here, eh?
Too late!
Me me Mrs E loved it. I was tepid on the idea but the review here gave an honest indication of the contents so off we went.
Trivia: look out for Bruno Tonioli off Sttictly in the “I’m Still Standing” video montage slash re-creation bit (he was free choreographer on the original video).
Terrific and spot-on review. I’m a big Elton fan, though wasn’t sure how the film would be. Personally I really liked the way songs were sequenced to fit the story, rather than historically correct, and very impressed with Taron Egerton. Also I reckon the one new song (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again is excellent.
Saw this on holiday last week. I really enjoyed it but I’m a sucker for the Moulin Rouge fantasy type of film. It could have done with a ten minute trim, but I was happy and shed the odd tear or too.
I was a big Elton fan in 1973/4. My wife can’t stand him. She says he makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
Strangely, she really enjoyed the film too .
(great central performances from the adult and children versions of Reg by the way)
Saw the film last night. Quite enjoyed it.
The fact that some songs were used at chronologically ‘wrong’ times during the film didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.
Jamie Bell’s accent as Bernie did seem to wander around alarmingly, sometimes sounding like Taupin came from the Highlands of Scotland. But to be fair, the real Bernie Taupin does have rather a bizarre, unpindownable Transatlantic accent.
I thought it was a pity that the film didn’t include any reference to, or songs from, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, as that was the very album that celebrated Elton and Bernie’s years struggling as Denmark Street songwriters, which the film also focuses on.
Anyway, I enjoyed Rocket Man a lot more than Bohemian Rhapsody, but that’s probably because I really like Elton John’s 1970-1977 music, whereas I loathe every note that Queen every recorded.
Saw it tonight. Absolutely magnificent! Not really an Elton John fan but just about everything about it was perfect.
I cant stand Elton’s music generally (even the early albums) but enjoyed this movie fantasy much more than I expected. Elton himself comes across as a very flawed but endearing human being, which was probably his objective.