It’s only fitting that a biopic about Elton John is a sequin covered fever dream that is full of melodrama and bangers.

Honestly, I should have written about this after I watched Tommy, but here we are.  It was a completely different viewing experience however, because my note taking died halfway through this film while I just sat and watched.  The plot was kind of squishy and malleable and transitions between fantasy and reality, and ultimately it was a journey I wanted to experience unencumbered.

This musical is loosely based on Elton John’s life pre-rehab, and it really dials up every single emotional beat to 11.  The first scene of the movie is Elton, played by Taron Egerton, crashing an AA meeting in full costume.  The leader of the group asks him what he was like as a child, which feels like something a therapist would ask you, not a AA counselor, who, presumably, is trying to guide discussions that involve the entire room?  But it gives the film the excuse to flashback to grade school Elton (whose real name is Reggie), dancing around with all of his neighbors in a cul-de-sac.

It was clear from the opening scenes that this movie was made by a crew who put a ton of love into this project.  The colors in the flashbacks are tinged like a colorized black-and-white photo, while adult and child Reggie/Elton are in full-blown technicolor.  The choreography is interesting, and isn’t shot in a way where you can’t see what is going on… I was sold.

We are introduced to his parents, who are both emotionally absent and don’t seem to like each other or their son.  Reggie cultivates his musical talents with encouragement from his grandmother, as they discovered when he was very young he had an extraordinary talent, and the ability to mimic what he hears exactly on the piano.

Sidenote: Someone do a “I Want Love” and “My Immortal” mashup, cause they’re the same song to me.

His parents ultimately divorce after his father discovers his mother is having an affair, and his new stepdad introduces him to rock music.  Reggie starts touring in a backup band to pay the bills and his bandmates encourage him to reinvent himself in order to stand out from the crowd.

The musical numbers in Rocketman are just so flipping cool.  They’re pure fantasy – colorful and over-the-top representations of Elton’s emotional state.

Taking their advice, Reggie decides to change his name to Elton while persuing a solo record deal.  The label connects him with his lifetime lyricist and writer of “We Built This City” Bernie Taupin, played by Jamie Bell.

I love Jamie Bell so much.  I fell in love with him as a kid watching Billy Elliot and every time I see him in a movie I get so excited.  I spend the beginning of Snowpiercer screaming for Chris Evans to protect him at all costs.  I was so happy to see Elton and Bernie’s bromance featured so prominently in this film because I found their working relationship to be the most intriguing part of Elton’s story.  Bernie legitimately writes the lyrics and then Elton just hears the song in his fucking head like he’s a (pinball) wizard or something.  I always get teared up when I hear “Your Song” (probably Moulin Rouge residuals, honestly), but the scene where Elton composes the song is so simple and sweet, just like the sentiment of the song.

After writing a few promising songs, the record company sends Elton and Bernie to America to drum up some interest by playing a few live shows. Elton introduces his new, flashy look, and although he was nervous as fuck, puts on a performance that has the entire crowd off their feet.

I sound like a broken record, but the musical numbers are sooooo prettttyyyyyy please watch them, they are the best ever and worth the price of admission.  My mother was in college when “Crocodile Rock” was released (her name is Suzie), and when she played the song when I was a kid she would tell me stories about how her and her roommate danced to it while laying on their backs and flailing their arms and legs in the air.  That memory has stuck with me and it always brings a smile to my face.

After the show, Elton meets John Reid, a man who he would start a personal and professional relationship with.  He assists with Elton’s glowup and rides his road to stardom before encouraging Elton to sever his ties with his record company so John can act as his manager.  Now achieving an extreme amount of success, Elton searches for acceptance from both of his parents, but fails to receive the emotional validation he needs to move on from the pain of his childhood.  He then realizes that John, of course, is using him for money and it breaks Elton’s heart.  Instead of firing John and taking back control of his life, Elton attempts suicide in front of a backyard full of people. 

The climax of the movie is the “Rocketman” scene, and hoo boy, it is extraordinary.  It’s the juxtaposition between the lowest moment of his life, and the highest moment of his career set to song.  How they pit-crew style puffed him up and shuffled him on stage beautifully illustrated the machinery-like aspect of the industry.

Bernie tries to convince Elton to take a break and get his head right, but his concerns about Elton’s mental health are consistently dismissed.  It’s only after diving further into his unhealthy coping mechanisms, a failed marriage, Bernie severing ties with him, and a heart attack that Elton struts into AA asking for help.  There’s some really heavy-handed mental reconciliation with the people who have hurt him in his past before Elton checks into rehab and repairs his relationship with Bernie.  The rest of Elton’s impressive career is a footnote to this story.

 My only gripe with this movie is the plot is cliché as fuck.  Elton is established as an unreliable narrator almost immediately, so it’s not like we’re meant to believe this is necessarily the full truth, but it does follow the touchstones of every VH1 Behind the Music.  Broken family, rise to fame, falling in love with their manager, being exploited, turning to addiction and spiraling to rock bottom, rehab, and redemption.  I found it curious that his trip to rehab was when the story stopped, until I started watching the press interviews Elton John did for this movie.  He’s been sober for something like 30 years now, and he stressed that the hardest thing he ever did was ask for help.  I feel like, to him, this movie’s purpose is to show that no matter how bad things can get, asking for help can lead to peace, closure, and success, and that’s extremely admirable.  With that knowledge, it’s easy for me to handwave away my annoyance and enjoy the ride.

Elton specifically requested Taron Egerton to be cast after he worked with him on The Kingsman sequel and insisted Taron record the songs with his own voice.  I thought this was a very smart move asTaron does have the singing chops.  He sounded like Elton without doing an Elton cosplay.  For better or worse, some of the vocals were recorded live because of Taron’s insistence, which he justifies, “I think it’s dangerous in a musical if you start thinking of singing as being something intrinsically different to speech, you’ve got to approach it in the same way.  So you don’t want to film this film that’s filled with dubbed dialogue because it feels disembodied, and it feels disconnected.  It’s the same in a musical.  Characters don’t just sing for the sake of singing in a musical, they sing, because all of a sudden, speech has become insufficient, it no longer does the job required.  It’s a level up in terms of expression.”

We’ve all heard the adage about how musicals work – characters speak until their emotions force them to sing, and when they’re too overwhelmed to sing, they dance – it’s Baby’s First Musical Theory.  But mannnnn, why is it so hard to believe that making your actors sing live over and over again is sacrificing vocal quality for realism?  Honestly, it’s not adding emotion because that’s what the music is forrrrrrr god fucking damn ittttttt.  If you get emotional hearing songs on the radio, or watching a music video, I promise, I fucking promise, it’s OK to have your actors prerecord the vocals.

Saying that… I only have one foot on my Sideways soapbox.  Taron isn’t singing opera, he’s singing pop music, so it’s not like there was an unneeded risk to his vocal chords.  Watching these interviews it is also clear that Dexter Fletcher and Taron Egerton love musicals.  Taron did his research – He references All That Jazz in his interviews as inspiration, and I stan a man who takes his job seriously.  But please, please, pleaseeee stop going to the Tom Hooper School of Realistic Movie Musicals.  Musicals require an inherent suspension of reality, which Rocketman handles beautifully in how it is filmed.  The minute realism is ham-fistedly inserted into a musical, it makes things awkward as fuck.