Rocketman
2019
****
Director: Dexter Fletcher
Cast: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard, Gemma Jones, Stephen Graham, Steven Macintosh, Tate Donovan, Charlie Rowe, Tom Bennett
In the late 1960s, a young piano prodigy named Reginald Dwight meets his life-long song-writing partner Bernie Taupin, changes his name to Elton John, and becomes one of the most recognisable pop stars of the 20th century. If last year's Bohemian Rhapsody was a likeable but very formulaic pop star biopic of Freddie Mercury, this entertaining biographical drama offers something more interesting. This is not really a depiction of the life and career of Elton John, but an intimate and subjective portrayal of a successful but increasingly lonely man who must come to terms with his emotionally distant parents, sexual identity, drug and alcohol addiction, and self-loathing before he can find happiness. We hear many of his best known tracks, but they are staged as musical numbers and cleverly used to illustrate his emotional state at any given time. A new cut named (I'm Gonna) Love Me Again won an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Taron Egerton gives an excellent performance in the lead.
