Rocketman - that fuse ain't burning down

Taron in one of his most Eltoniest get ups

Rocketman, coming pretty soon after Bohemian Rhapsody, makes a comparison between the two inevitable. Thank the gods that this one they got right. Bohemian Rhapsody played out like a standard biopic - very reminiscent of Dewey Cox in fact - as more than one reviewer mentioned. Rocketman is a fantastic musical which doesn't necessarily follow a standard this happened, and then this happened, format. It does follow Elton's life for about two decades in a somewhat linear fashion but the story unravels as moments rather than a sequence of events. And each of these moments is either lovingly cradled or exuberantly paraded using one of Elton's songs rather brilliantly sung by Taron.

Taron Egerton is the absolutely heart and soul of the movie. As the lead, I suppose that's expected but he so amazingly embodies Elton that it's beautiful to watch. It's not a mimicry - even when he sings Taron doesn't try to copy Elton's voice. He sings like himself (with Elton's blessings) giving each song the emotional drive it deserves to service that particular scene in the movie. So you will get a gentle, hesitant, loving rendition of Your Song and then you will get a snazzy jazzy let's get things rolling version of Honky Cat. The fact that Taron sings the songs in his own way is a good thing because his singing voice is different to Elton's - not as strong for one thing - and had he tried to ape Elton's voice it would have sounded forced. He sings in a way that's true to his own voice and that works really well.

Blatantly stolen (because look at that face) from Vogue, April 2019 (Photographed by Anton Corbijn)

As much as I admired Rami Malek's dedicated take on Freddie, it always felt very caricature-ish. The humongous teeth, the fact that he was so small, it just felt so jarring and kept lifting me out of the whole experience. The only saving grace the movie had was the music - and that was also a stage performance type of affair.

In Rocketman the whole rehab story telling device could have come off as hackneyed. But thankfully it works. Everything just gels. It's no secret that Dexter Fletcher took over at the tail end of BOhemian Rhapsody after Bryan Singer left. But given what he has done with Rocketman it's clear that he had very little creative leeway with Bohemian Rhapsody. It just goes to show what effect outside control has over the final outcome of a movie. It's evident that Queen and Elton must have had very different ideas about what they want said in their respective movie. Elton fought for the R rating and a near depiction of what his life really was back then (proper sex, drugs, rock and roll). And while Freddie's life must have been as way out there, very little is depicted in the film, which is more a vehicle for the music of Queen than an actual biopic. It's a pity, because I would love to see a proper Freddie Mercury story. Maybe Sacha Baron Cohen would have made it. We will never know.

Awwwwwwww. These two.

It's been a while since Elton was putting out new music all the time and you tend to forget what an absolute star he is. At 72 he is still a tour de force at the piano  - you only have to watch him in that now famous duet at Cannes when he and Taron sing Rocketman. Taron can sing but Elton, hoo boy, that's proper star power.
Roketman is one of those movies that I could have just kept on watching, and watching for as long as the music lasted.