I love Elton John. I love musicals. I did not see Rocketman in theaters. I knew that the same people who made Bohemian Rhapsody were associated with this film so I didn’t trust them. A friend warned me that the film uses a narrative trope that I despise, How We Got Here in which we start at the end of a story. I also knew that Elton John approved the story and was deeply involved in the process, and I have an unofficial rule. Some of the worst films are made because the filmmaker is too close to the subject, and while it is important for a subject to bless a project, it is also essential to have enough distance and independence from the subject to bring fresh insight into a person’s story. Also every summer, Taron Egerton, who is a winning young actor, tries to get a summer hit and never quite hits the mark. He has charisma, is attractive, works hard, but it isn’t quite coming together, and playing Elton John seems like he is going for the Oscar, but isn’t in line with his usual role.
After watching Rocketman at home, I discovered another reason not to go to theaters. Elton John’s voice is so deeply encoded into my memory that hearing anyone else singing his music is unbearable, including and especially children of various ages playing a young Reggie Dwight. I always hated Star Search because young kids performing generally verges on the line of manic, psychotic energy levels. It is uncomfortable to watch them perform. They just execute a series of tricks at the most explosive levels without any real insight into what they are actually trying to convey to the audience. Imagine an entire movie with that same energy.
Rocketman makes Bohemian Rhapsody seem like a masterpiece in comparison, even in spite of the hopefully unintentional homophobic undertones, which thankfully is the one thing that Rocketman does not suffer from, or I did not notice because there were so many other glaring horrors. Most biopics feel as if they are a paint by the numbers, stations of Christ, lifeless recitation of important events. Now imagine Star Search energy with a fraction of the checklist of important events, and what few events are depicted aren’t even close to the way that most of it happened. I don’t know a lot about Elton John’s life, and I’m one of those movie goers that is fine with changing a Bible story when adapting it to film if the change is in line with the spirit of the overall story so I didn’t expect to complain about accuracy, but here I am complaining about it. Did it really advance the story for Elton to create the music for Candle in the Wind in an audition or pretend like Rocketman was inspired by a suicide attempt? Other times it feels painfully literal like Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting) when we get a musical sequence showing Reggie age and perform while dodging West Side Street style skirmishes. If it wanted to completely embrace its Saturday Night Live horrible skit aesthetic, the film could have devoted a brief shot to a calendar showing that it was actually a Saturday. Even though I know nothing about Elton John’s life, I instinctually knew that the depiction was completely untrue, which a cursory Google or IMDb search confirmed. Instead it felt as if they wanted to stuff as many great songs into the movie as they could and try to make it fit by cramming it in there.
I actually enjoy Jukebox Film Musicals because the songs usually sound good and the context in which the popular songs are presented have no pretense of veracity. It is just a fresh way of seeing something familiar, which evokes a new emotion that brings out some unexpected meaning hitherto missed when listening to the song. Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge maybe my favorite example, and Across the Universe worked for me, but a more germane example would be any Prince movie though they vary in quality. In Prince’s movies, it is pure fiction while also including the original artist’s involvement. Rocketman is dreadful because it is trying to be a biopic like What’s Love Got to Do with It while completely abandoning anything but the most superficial visual accuracy of Elton John’s actual story. Bernie Taupin actually wrote Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting) based on his teenage years, not Elton John. I didn’t even know of Bernie Taupin’s existence before this movie. Why would a movie authorized by Elton John tell someone else’s life story and pretend as if it was the icon’s life?
The premise of Rocketman’s narrative is group therapy. He lies to the group, but we see the past as he sees it and the truth that he can bear to face. I’m not a fan of this framing because it seems like the worst group therapy session ever. Congratulations that you’re getting to hob knob with a legend, but no one else is going to be able to work out their issues while he is a member. If Elton John has enthusiastically cosigned this movie, then maybe that is the element of truth to this film, and it explains why I found it so spectacularly unsatisfying. Maybe this movie is genuinely how he sees his life and is able to convey it. He is still performing and unable to fully strip down and take a stark look although compared to where he was, he has. We’re still watching his inner child create. Shudder. Hey, if it works for him, and it certainly does, then good for him, and I’m happy for him, but it is too bad that every one else behind the scenes were as enamored with this vision of his life and decided that it would translate into film. The result is a frenzied paced film with no sense of rhythm or a proportionate devotion of time to the most important elements of his life.
If I had to compliment Rocketman, I thought that the visual sequence from the pool to being passed from different groups hands until he finally lands on stage was beautiful until the film ruined it with another painfully literal interpretation of the titular song. I also loved his defiant speech to his mother, who is played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who feels like the actor that you get when you can’t get the actor that you really want. I kept thinking that she looked like Gemma Arterton. I was disappointed that the film didn’t focus more on the stepfather—there are a lot of unsung heroes of people who do a better job than the biological parents, and he seemed like one of them. I haven’t seen Tate Donovan in forever, and now I want him to get a movie and learn all about Doug Weston, whom I know nothing about, because he captured my attention. For a second, the proceedings felt like they were getting real and time was slowing down after a confrontation between Elton and his first long-term boyfriend.
Genuine question: I’m not a gay man, but is it a common experience for gay men to have one of the most important women in their life say that he’ll never find love after he comes out to her?
My mom loved Rocketman. One of my Lyft drivers who follows Elton John as if the icon was Phish loved Rocketman. I’m in the minority, Dreckitude.