A good musical biopic that triumphantly steers clear of some clichés

Rating: 7/10 (25 February 2020)

So I'm a little late on Rocketman, but having recently watched Bohemian Rhapsody (and been slightly underwhelmed by it in many areas,) I'd heard Rocketman was a better alternative, and my interest in watching it went right up. It's overall not a perfect film, and indeed it's hard not to compare it a whole lot with the aforementioned Freddie Mercury/Queen biopic, but it is quite a good one. It's the kind of film where I loved aspects, found faults in some other areas, but came away from it feeling mostly pretty positive. The music biopic is one genre that can feel very clichéd and by the numbers, and while there are conventional parts to Rocketman's story, a good deal of the style and impressive musical numbers help give it a slight (and very welcome) fresh feel.
Firstly, it's worth reiterating what everyone else has realised long ago and comment that Taron Egerton is great in the role of Elton John, and showed range as an actor that I for one wasn't aware he had. His performance was charismatic and always very engaging, and I was glad that it was his skill as an actor rather than just the costumes, hair, and makeup that made him so convincing as Elton John (although those all helped, of course). It's also worth mentioning that Richard Madden was also really good. I only know him as the heroic and sometimes a little bit boring Robb Stark from Game Of Thrones, and so to see him play a really despicable character here was surprising and refreshing. I think Madden's surprisingly good at playing a villain and I honestly hope he takes more roles as absolute sleaze balls in the future.
The film really does shine during its imaginative and lively musical sequences, to the point where I kind of wish there had been more of them. I realise it would have been harder to tell a straightforward story if the film had been told entirely through the music of Elton John without lengthy and more traditional dialogue scenes in-between, but I think it's the kind of bold experiment that could have helped turn a good film like Rocketman into an absolutely great one. Those non-musical sequences aren't bad, but they are less consistent, with the pace often feeling too rushed, although it does help keep it from being boring. For an example, Elton John gets married at one point, to someone he just met, and then no more than two minutes later, they're already about to separate. It felt odd and rushed, and there were other scenes that gave me this sort of feeling. Pacing wise, perhaps a shorter window of time being covered could have helped, focusing in on just a few key moments in the subject's life like Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs from 2015 did, or maybe even made the film just 10-15 minutes longer, to allow the really fast scenes to breathe a little more.
Also on the topic of the non-musical sequences: for me, they looked a little too bright, digital, and shiny. It makes more sense for the musical numbers to be similarly flashy and colourful, but for the scenes without musical numbers, it didn't work as well. While it's technically solid, I wish the film looked a little more 70s, as it really didn't evoke the time period very well (maybe it did with things like fashion and hairstyles, but not so much with the production design or technical aspects). They didn't have to shoot it like a typical 1970s film exactly, but if you look at how Tarantino shot his recent Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it's done in a way that really evokes the time period without feeling exactly like a movie shot in the late 1960s. The colour, pacing, and more authentic locations all helped Tarantino's latest to truly feel like it was set when it was, and the shooting on actual film rather than digital cameras helped too (I wish Rocketman had employed a similar strategy). There is one moment where Egerton is digitally inserted into an old Elton John music video, and even though that video was colourful and flamboyant, it had a certain grit and graininess to it where you could really tell it was filmed around the time the film was set. I wish the film as a whole had taken a bit more inspiration from this original music video.
The glossiness of the film's look in its non-musical sequences did occasionally clash with the darker, grittier story it sometimes tried to tell. However: I must say that overall I did really like how Rocketman was edgier and more direct with its depiction of a wild rock star lifestyle, which Bohemian Rhapsody frustratingly dialed down to an extreme degree. Rocketman wasn't over the top or overly graphic which was also good; it got the balance just right in showing things in a more intense, mature way, without being gratuitously shocking.
I don't think you have to be an Elton John fan to like this movie, as I wouldn't describe myself as a huge fan (although I do absolutely love the 11-minute song 'Funeral For A Friend/ Love Lies Bleeding,' and was disappointed that no part of it found its way into this movie). I can imagine if you do love his music though that will help, and perhaps allow you to have a more favourable reaction than I did. The film paints what feels like a mostly honest yet still celebratory and sometimes joyful depiction of this iconic man's life and his music. It's quite good and does contain moments of greatness (mainly a few of those aforementioned musical sequences), so I could ultimately feel comfortable in giving it a solid recommendation to most filmgoers.