Like Elton John, not the movie

Rating: 3/10 (29 March 2020)

Let me start by saying that a movie about Elton John should be larger than life, because he is larger than life. I hope in 50 years, when all them eager artists are watching movies about musicians that there will be a better film about Elton John. Rocketman makes his life out to be some tragedy - a tragedy we've seen played out a thousand times before.
I think the writing is lousy.
The credits mention that Elton's been sober 28 years, but nothing of the better years of his life is depicted in this film. If that's a spoiler, I'm sorry, but I really feel I'm doing you a favor when I tell you not to bother watching this film.
Other than Elton himself, the characters are written poorly. There's no real explanation of why the relationship with his mother goes south, and while his relationship with his father was broken, the film doesn't depict what they did that was so wrong for Elton to take to a life of drugs and alcohol. When Elton was crying, I felt nothing. Nothing in this film shocked or saddened me.
I'd say the biggest tragedy is that this film could have been a real learning experience, but people that don't know anything about Elton shouldn't watch this film. I find it hard to believe that Elton would want a movie that just shows how broken he was, because the best years of his life were after all the turmoil that this film focuses on. I find that to be the biggest tragedy here... that he'd want to be remembered as a broken child. I want people to know that Elton is iconic and this film does a terrible job representing him in that regard.
The worst critique I can give this film is that I won't watch it again.