Fails to launch

Rating: 3/10 (27 May 2019)

People must have very low expectations if they thought this was good. Mine were set at "Bohemian Rhapsody low," a standard it still failed to meet. There's nothing moving about this; they really F up the music by trying to create a book musical about Elton's early life with all of the actors singing it - probably the only pleasure of BoRhap was hearing Queen's originals on a good sound system. You'll get none of that here. It's all re-arranged, truncated, poorly sung. You have to tolerate the poor singing even though there's nothing realistic about the script, no dramatic scenes of note, just images and montages, the actors are just stand-ins for characters we never get to know much about (Gemma Jones, of course, being the best of them). For some reason, Bryce Dallas Howard is innit trying to talk like Adele - surely they could've gotten any number of British actresses to play/stand-in as Elton's mother?! It's a bit like watching a stage show on film. But the script hasn't a clue what's going on in the middle - and you won't either - with its muddled timeline (erm, Elton John was a huge star when he duetted with Kiki Dee - he hooks up with Richard Madden's John Reid after the Troubadour gig in August 1970 and we're meant to believe they don't see each other again until the recording of Don't Go Breaking My Heart in March 1976 but still somehow carry a white hot flame for each other? Whatever). The absence of anything from or even about Captain Fantastic is a disappointment. But this rubbish is what passes for a 5-star film these days. There's a lot of whinging about how hard it is/was to be Elton John but in the hands of Fletcher, Hall and Egerton, no actual pain or anything to empathise with. There are moments when it looks a bit like Ken Russell's Tommy - the worst bits. Hall's rendering and Egerton's performance are both just one note: "poor me, I'm Elton John." For the most part, Egerton looks like a children's party entertainer. Nothing like the original, for those who remember the times. It ends very anti-climatically with Egerton CGI-d into the original video for I'm Still Standing which was more of a curio at the time, rather than a career high; and a slideshow of Elton's public and personal accomplishments since then, done as the type of thing you'd expect at a surprise party rather than a major motion picture. If it makes $900M I'll be surprised. Again.