Hard to finish, easy to dismiss

Rating: 3/10 (8 May 2020)

Going into Rocketman, I expected a heartfelt, poignant, and ultimately uplifting portrait of the life of a gay icon whose musical prowess restructured pop music forever and gifted us with some of the most ubiquitous hits of the 20th century. Instead, I was presented with nearly two hours of Taron Egerton humming his way through the classics, trying desperately to evoke the whimsical stylings of Elton John but coming up short every single time.
"Rocketman" is poised to convince us that Elton John is more than just the man behind the eccentric costumes and otherworldly performances. Instead, Dexter Fletcher takes Elton's image and frames it to be palatable. He takes the bits and pieces of his life that would best fit into a typical biopic, crams them into two hours, and portrays his life in the most cliched, corny fashion possible.
The story is by-the-books: the child prodigy in an unloving home, the "partner-in-crime" character, the meteoric rise to stardom, the nervous first performance, the abusive partner, the spiral into madness and drugs, the rising from the ashes. You could have told me this was a parody of a biopic and I wouldn't have questioned you for a second. There is practically nothing to differentiate this film from the hundreds of biopics about assorted famous people to be made in the past half-century, which is even more unfortunate when you consider just how unique an individual Elton John is.
Speaking of which, Taron Egerton's characterization may be passionate, but it's also overacted to the point where I cringed whenever I saw him getting "emotional" again. I know Elton John was dramatic, but could we go five minutes without him yelling, crying, beaming, moping? Was there no room for nuance?
I would talk about the other characters in the film a bit more, but since the film doesn't care about them, the audience shouldn't either. Their only utility is to provide Elton further purpose in his life and career, and in the context of the movie, these people can be one of two things: helpers or hindrances. The most dynamic characters switch from one to the other, but it rarely goes much deeper than that. This becomes abundantly clear towards the movie's closing scene, when Elton sees the "spirits" of his loved ones and colleagues, as if they were demons and angels sent to him and him only, and confronts or thanks them one-by-one. They each say one or two lines that defines their entire role in the movie, and then Elton quickly shoots each of them down with a "Gotcha!" moment. Should we be concerned that these are real people with real stories and real personalities watered down to fit neatly into painfully archetypal roles within Elton's life? Is it odd that he has one final, supposedly cathartic moment where he strips their characters down to their barest elements and reveals just how simple their portrayals in the movie are? I thought it was, but maybe I shouldn't have. After all, this is ELTON'S movie, not Bernie's or anyone else's, so why should they be fleshed out? ...right?
The music also bears mentioning, of course, since it IS a musical. I kept hoping that this would be the film's saving grace, but I was sorely mistaken. Most jukebox musicals, especially ones that span an artist's whole career, have some self-awareness and recognize that it's impossible to string together an entire discography of loosely-related singles and expect a fully realized portrait of an artist's life to come together in the process. (Clearly, Dexter Fletcher didn't get the memo.) These types of musicals instead allow for the story to progress for some amount of time before hitting us with another musical number, and build the story around the songs rather than with them. By not inundating the audience with performances, they allow for everyone to get a feel for the narrative outside of the songs and to take a breath in between. "Rocketman" seems intent on suffocating moviegoers.
This math is probably flawed (as most math is) but the film's soundtrack album is about 1 hour and 13 minutes long. Compare that number to the runtime of the movie (2 hours and 1 minute) and it means that more than 60% of the movie is just music. On top of that, Taron Egerton is certainly no Pavarotti, let alone Elton John. While he's shown himself to be a competent vocalist in the past, and he has a similar timbre to his voice as Elton, it's evident that vocally, there's no real comparison. The passion, the soulfulness, it's all stripped away to be more to the film's liking. Worse yet is the processing on the vocals, which borders on T-Pain levels, and renders the music absolutely lifeless.
Regardless of who's singing, though, the bottom line is that it doesn't feel like I'm actually watching an accurate approximation of someone's life story when their story feels secondary to the music, especially when plot points show up and disappear simply for the sake of being able to include a certain song. The "Tiny Dancer" scene, where Elton seems jaded after seeing Bernie getting with a woman, makes barely any sense before it happens and just as much sense afterwards. A few scenes before (or after, not really sure) Elton makes a move on Bernie, and Bernie rejects his advances. Elton doesn't seem too distraught over it, and this is the only other time this idea of any unrequited love between the two of them comes up in the entire movie, so why include that as a part of the story in the first place? And if that's not what we're meant to glean from this scene, then why use a song like "Tiny Dancer"?
All in all, please don't make me watch this movie again, Dad.