Film Review: Rocketman – Dir: Dexter Fletcher

0

Starring: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard

After taking over from Bryan Singer on Bohemian Rhapsody, Dexter Fletcher gets a well-deserved directors credit for Rocketman.

With Bohemian Rhapsody breaking box office records, becoming the biggest grossing biopic of all time, musical biographies are hot property at the moment and none more so than Rocketman.

This highly stylized telling of the Elton John story is easy to draw comparisons to its predecessor. In addition to sharing directors, both films’ subjects are flamboyant gay rock stars whose commercial peak was in the 1970s and 80s.

Both films also feature excellent star turns by their leads, each completely inhabiting their respective iconic front men.

But Bohemian Rhapsody had several glazing problems that kept it, in my opinion, from being a complete success artistically. Some of the writing and directing was clunky and clichéd, while the altering of basic facts and events seemed unnecessary and counterproductive.

Rocketman avoids both of those mistakes.

The film begins with a flamboyantly-dressed Elton entering an alcoholic’s anonymous meeting, giving Fletcher the perfect device to tell Elton’s story through a series of flashbacks.

We witness young Reg Dwight, the piano prodigy, being ignored and emotionally abused by his parents and nurtured by his grandmother (Gemma Jones).

Things finally go Reg’s way after meeting lyricist Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell). The two become fast friends, and it’s this (platonic) friendship that becomes the glue that seems to hold Elton’s career together.

A more toxic relationship is that between Elton and his debonair manager John Reid (Richard Madden). The two become lovers and things end badly.

While all of these personal elements are interesting (and widely known to anyone who is more than a casual fan), they never really seem to let us in to the real Elton. He still seems somewhat distant. And with the real Elton John acting as executive producer of the film, one wonders if this wasn’t an opportunity for him to settle some scores with both his parents and his former manager.

What really makes this film a joy to watch is the way Dexter Fletcher approaches Elton John’s music. Classic songs such as Tiny Dancer, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Your Song and Honky Cat are presented as if they were part of a musical.

And despite the fact that they often appear completely out of chronological order, it doesn’t seem to matter. For instance, Elton is seen performing Crocodile Rock at his breakthrough show at LA’s Troubadour in 1970, several years before the song was actually written. But Fletcher’s treatment of the tune, showing the audience actually levitating from the sheer power of the performance, captures the spirit of the show perfectly. In fact, I just ran across an interview with Linda Ronstadt, who was in the audience on the night, and she does indeed claim that Elton’s performance as “levitating”.

Fletcher’s approach is more “magic realism” than “documentarian” and Rocketman is all the better film because of it.

Marty Duda

Rocketman is in cinemas May 30th. 

 

 

Marty Duda
Latest posts by Marty Duda (see all)