Kind of a hot mess...

Rating: 1/10 (11 June 2019)

Rocketman displays such a strange mixture of self-pity and self-aggrandizement that it made the tone way too confusing to pin down. The character/story development is weak and a lot of the musical scenes seem to be thrown in there just to get some of Elton's hits out as a way to kill screen time.
It shows Elton heavy into his addictions but doesn't really show how they started. Yeah ok, it shows the childhood roots of his pain that led to them, but for a "warts and all" biopic that is based around addiction, it doesn't give the audience enough of a look into how those addictions surfaced in his adult life. It also doesn't address the aftermath of his suicide attempt and doesn't show him recovering from his addictions. This was a VERY lazy look at addiction, its repercussions, and the healing process. That is why the biopic part doesn't work, so in the end it's just a showy musical that appeals to the senses.
All it is is flash, glitz, and glam, with a bunch of sadness and negativity strewn into it, rather than having true quality substance. Bohemian Rhapsody knew the exact story it wanted to tell. It didn't make you think you were watching one thing and then another thing came in to distract you. It also didn't need to rely on gratuitous sex or drugs in order to get the point across that Freddie Mercury liked to have sex and do drugs. Sometimes less really is more...
Some of the more explicit scenes are just so unnecessary. It's like they threw a bunch of random gay scenes on the screen just because they could. And they're gonna except praise for it and Academy Awards because it's "progressive". Now their team (including Elton & Taron) is angry that Russia is cutting out the gay scenes. And there have been talks that it might not even be released in China. They knew what they were doing when they followed through with Elton's R-rated vision for this movie. They have no right to complain.
This movie does one thing really well...it gets you so distracted by good music and grand visuals that you are tricked into thinking you just saw an in depth story of Elton John's life. But those things do not make for a complete story.
A lot of people seem to like that Rocketman is very different than Bohemian Rhapsody, but don't fool yourself into thinking it wasn't full of the typical biopic cliches and factual inaccuracies that you are all so vocal about with Bohemian Rhapsody. This movie doesn't even feel like it's a biopic about someone famous until you're reminded of it when the text comes on screen at the end, but it almost becomes laughable at that point because you just sat through 2 hours of watching unrealistic fantasy moments and the entire cast breaking out into random song and dance. Honestly, Rocketman's main goal seemed to be marketing Elton's songs for his farewell tour.
Bohemian Rhapsody & Queen Freddie for the win!!