Rocketman

Or: A True Fantasy

The dual moral of Rocketman, the fabulation based on the life and career of Elton John (Taron Egerton) might be summed up as this: don’t do drugs and don’t date men who wear suits to rock concerts. The minute John Reid (Richard Madden) flits across the screen at the Troubadour while Elton lifts his audience to Crocodile Rock, we know he is bad news and can read our heroes unfortunate future in the knifelike cut of his lapels.

The Musician biopic is an easy formula to concoct satisfying to watch and therefore not a lot of people go beyond it. Rocketman while following the same pilgrim's path of rise and fall and ultimate redemption at least provides spectacle along the way, with gorgeous costumes and some nifty movie-musical choreography, with homages to Busby Berkeley in the splurge of Get Back Honky Cat and Farah Kahn in the feisty extravagance of “Saturday Night’s Alright”

Egerton proves a captivating singer, matching the same cocky iridescence of voice. His fits of rage are less credible, and the drugged and drunk accesses lack a finesse. But untimely such films are about the music, and the artist only serves as the ring, to be tortured, teased, and heated beyond endurance, so the jewels can be mounted within it.

It's glitzy and gaudy and heartfelt and it does one good to see a good boy find love, and rise above the pressures of a barren and blasted childhood, avoid disaster with the help of his friends and shake off the curse of a man who wears suits to rock concerts.