A decent effort from a decent director

Rating: 8/10 (3 August 2019)

This film is a good example of a strong, yet not entirely accurate, portrayal of a musician battling addiction and alcoholism amidst his rise to stardom. "Rocketman" has some incredible acting featured in it, especially from Taron Egerton and Jamie Bell, whose on-screen chemistry is quite simply the beauty of the film and creates the sense that Elton John and Bernie Taupin truly did have a special bond in real life. Other decent performances come in the way of Richard Madden as John Reid, an abusive and manipulative music producer who is Elton's "lover" in the film and Bryce Dallas Howard, who portrays Elton's mother. Criticisms of this film include its inaccurate depiction of certain real-life events, the unnecessary singing of songs during key dramatic moments and the lack of an overall resolute ending to the plot (the film ends with Elton writing "I'm Still Standing" along with Bernie as he is checked out of rehab and the film ends with a brief summary of Elton having been over 28 years sober by the year 2019). Overall, I generally enjoyed watching this film and it's definitely worth a viewing but in my opinion, it's not as worthy of attention as director Dexter Fletcher's previous work, "Bohemian Rhapsody", in which Rami Malek won the Academy Award For Best Actor for his phenomenal portrayal of Queen frontman, Freddie Mercury.