Rocketman - that fuse ain't burning down

Rating: 9/10 (9 July 2019)

Rocketman, coming hard on the heels of Bohemian Rhapsody, makes a comparison between the two inevitable. Thank the gods that this one they got right.
Taron Egerton is - simply brilliant. He embodies Elton, and doesn't try to mimic him, even when he sings. Which is a good thing because his singing voice is different to Elton's - not as strong for one thing - and had he tried to match that it would have sounded forced. He sings in a way that's true to his own voice and that works really well.
As much as I admired Rami Malek's dedicated take on Freddie, it always felt like a caricature. The humongous teeth, the fact that he he seems so much smaller , it just felt so cartoonish. The only saving grace the movie had was the music.
In Rocketman the story telling device used (thank the stars it's not another Dewey Cox 'I'm having a flashback before the show' affair) and that fact that it's unabashedly a musical works so well. Everything just gels. Both movies were at least partially directed by the same chap (in Bohemian Rhapsody Dexter Fletcher took over after Bryan Singer walked off) - and it goes to show what effect outside control has over the final outcome of a movie. Queen and Elton appear to have very different ideas about what they want said in their movie. Elton fought for the R rating and a near depiction of what his life really was back then (proper sex, drugs and rock and roll). And while Freddie's life must have been way out there, very little is depicted in the film, which is more a vehicle for the music of Queen than an actual biopic.
It's been a while since Elton was putting out new music all the time and you tend to forget what an absolute star he is. At 72 he is still a tour de force at the piano - you only have to watch him in that now famous duet at Cannes with Taron (Tiny Dancer). Taron can sing but Elton, hoo boy, that's proper star power.
Roketman is one of those movies that I could have just kept on watching, for as long as the music lasted.