A school play hiding behind good music

Rating: 3/10 (22 November 2019)

To call the characters two dimensional would be giving the writer and director too much credit. Every single character is one note. The brusque cigar chomping producer. The other devilish producer. The aloof parents. Poor Elton seems to have been completely surrounded by total a-holes his whole life. The only character and his relationship to Elton that is a bit more fleshed out is Bernie Taupin. Probably because he's still friends with Elton. Maybe this is what happens when someone (and their significant other) produce their own biopic.
The only thing worse than the characters is the storytelling, which is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the balls. It reeks of amateur hour. Everything is wildly predictable. I watched this movie with a group of friends, and we laughed throughout the whole movie at its inept storytelling.
Some examples:
When Elton is auditioning for music school and forgot to bring his sheet music I said: "I bet he's going to play what the teacher just played, and do so perfectly."
When he stopped playing and she asked why I said: "He's going to tell the teacher 'Because that's where you stopped'."
When Elton gets out of rehab I said: "I bet they're going to play 'I'm still standing'."
The examples go on and on and on. And this is not because me and my friends are psychic or geniuses, it's just one hell of a poorly written movie.
When Elton and Bernie move into an apartment they meet their female landlord sitting on the stoop. If I remember correctly they only say hello, and she's given about 15 seconds of screen time. The next scene Elton is racked with anxiety and feeling of guilt about being gay, and how he's going to tell his girlfriend. The one we have seen for roughly 15 seconds. Here's a friendly tip to the writer of this movie: If you want your audience to sympathize with, or even feel something for, the characters you write, how about we get to know them a little bit?
But if you think they only do this once in this movie, you would be mistaken. Later on Elton meets a woman when he makes another album. I think they only meet in one scene (maybe two), and then they get happily married. Smash cut to them coming out from separate bedrooms, having their breakfast together in silence, clearly unhappy with the whole situation. Again, as a viewer I feel absolutely nothing, since I have only met this character for a few minutes in only a handful of scenes, yet this is supposed to be a big moment in Elton's life.
The music is great, of course. But if you think you're going to learn anything about how that music was created, you'd be wrong. Everything comes to Elton as instant inspiration apparently. Nothing is tried out or experimented on, everything is just perfect from the start.
This was not one for the history books.