Rocketman: My Good, Bad, and Ugly

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2019)

The Good:
With a spate of jukebox musical tributes to 20th century masters coming to theaters in recent years Fletcher offers up Rocketman about the early life and career of Elton John. Rather than break up the drama with re-enacted performances, Rocketman infuses elements from classical Hollywood musicals. By telling the story through a series of flashbacks the film benefits from being seen through the creative and sometimes imaginative memory of John himself, so the presentation includes musical set pieces of song and dance and bits of fantasy. These deviations from strict realism remind us that John is perhaps an unreliable narrator and add vibrancy that's absent in contemporary musician biopics that are stale and generic by comparison.
The Bad:
With a British actors cast in most of the British parts, Bryce Dallas Howard's casting to play Elton's mother, Sheila, is perplexing. Her star status is quite jarring from her first appearance on screen. While her performance is perfectly dastardly at times, her transformation is somehow incomplete. Because her role is less and less prominently featured as the film goes on, the overall effect of her presence is diminished and the film suffers less as a whole. To say the least of this film is this poorly cast, but well performed, role is a testament to the film's composition and the other performances.
The Ugly:
Although it's not a biopic, Across the Universe (Julie Taymor, 2007) exemplifies the jukebox musical in its showcase of some of the Beatles most popular songs, and the inclusion of classical Hollywood's most successful musicals. The musical set pieces of Rocketman that lift it above other biopics, like Bohemian Rhapsody, are almost exclusively how the music of The Beatles was showcased in Taymor's film. Rocketman would have certainly benefited from taking a similar tack, but because Elton John and his real-life performances were so colorful and ostentatious, the set pieces used early in the film fade in favor of performances re-enacted.