Rare look behind the celebrity mask (contains spoilers)

Rating: 10/10 (11 May 2020)

Elton John has given us his audience the gift of sharing his emotional reality. It doesn't really matter if you are a multi-millionaire sitting in an exclusive restaurant when your mother states what a burden it has been being your mother. There are some sources of human pain that transcend fame and fortune. For every Elton John, there are many children who don't have that incredible musical talent to save them, at least financially. What Elton John does here is provide all of us a road map for recovery, through our own mind and our own pain, a validation of doing the work through psychotherapy to reach the other side and stop self-destruction based upon internalized early childhood rejection and pain. It would have been so easy to stay behind the mask. This movie makes me want to meet Elton in a pub for a beer. What an incredible service and labor of love. That it comes with his fabulous music and great dancing is the cherry on the icing. That this film, produced by his proud husband, is the ultimate love letter that any spouse could receive - the story of how Elton became his own hero - make this a particularly satisfying sundae. What a deep, sweet, entertaining movie, with many levels and nuances. A superb film.