Review of Rocketman (2019) by Greenisgood — 07 Nov 2019

TL;DR - The most shocking thing for me is even though I am a huge Queen fan and my knowledge of Elton John's work stops at Lion King, I still enjoyed Rocketman more as a movie. Taron Egerton is absolutely captivating in his portrayal along with stellar editing and writing makes the Biopic/Musical a worthwhile watch. My lack of knowledge for Elton John's timeless work and personal life definitely had a lot of impact on my enjoyment and I assume is why I loved this movie much more as a work of semi fiction over a true fan or follower hoping to see his true life story.

The Good.

I was far more astonished at my own reaction for this film than you can ever understand. Even though it has some of my most hated movie elements; i.e, family drama, A Musical, sleazebag love interest and many more all of these elements are held up with good writing, beautiful cinematography, an understated excellence in performances creating something more than any genre tagline I can label. Everyone in this movie bring their 'A' game which helps propel this well written story ahead of the pack of generic Biopics, the editing definitely helps but the strong dialogue writing makes the character interactions some of the most powerful scenes in the movie. Particularly the ending left me with some good food for thought as we see Taron Egerton make his concluding steps to the end of his character portrayal.

The Bad.

But as no movie can be perfect there were quite a few gripes I had with this movie, very, very minor gripes in comparison to the good entertainment value this film provides us. A few places the pacing seems to dwindle a little too much, the sleazebag manager/lover could have benefited from better character writing and a little more emphasis on the best part which is Elton John's interaction with his friends and family would have helped.

Even though the character/friends and family interactions were the best part of the film it seems to lack a little, slightly over-shadowed by a few too many musical numbers. Some quieter more dialogue based character development scenes over certain Musical numbers was necessary to make this a tighter and more streamlined experience.