Now when I say that last year was a very educational experience when it came to musical biopics, it's because I learned that a lot of people have very different expectations going into them than I do. When it comes to ANY biopic, musical or not, my number one priority is that it's accurate. Now if you have to take creative liberties because certain events aren't known or there's disagreement on how things went down, then fine. Fill in the gaps the best you can. But when you straight-up don't even try to be accurate, like Adam McKay with "Vice" last year, that drives me crazy because you're presenting a false story about someone's life. The other thing I expect from a biopic is for the narrative structure to be interesting. If your movie is as boring as tar, despite being historically accurate, I'm still going to take issue because I want an interesting movie. If the subject of your movie doesn't have a life that makes for a good movie, pick a different subject or make a documentary instead. When it comes to "Bohemian Rhapsody," they failed on BOTH of these aspects. They made a movie that was as boring as tar that was also mostly fictional, which drove me crazy on so many levels, especially since Freddie Mercury had a fascinating life that didn't need to be changed around.
"But Adam, you're just not a big Queen fan. That's why you didn't like it." Oh my fracking goodness. I've had multiple people tell me this. Although I think I handle myself in a civil way when I'm accused of not liking Queen because I didn't like their biopic, inside I'm ready to slap said person in the face. I LOVE Queen. I may not be a huge Queen nerd. I don't know all of their albums by heart. In my defense, though, there's very few bands where I've listened to all of their albums. I usually just pay attention to singles. With Queen, they helped define my musical taste. I love music from the 70's and the 80's. If I were to create a list of artists and bands that were most influential in that, you better believe Queen would be high up on that list with the likes of Journey and U2. So don't anyone dare accuse me of not liking Queen. In fact, I'd argue that it's because I like Queen that I didn't like their biopic. I knew what it had the potential to become. I didn't want a lazily strung together sequence of concert scenes and song creations. I wanted a story. And when they decided to do story, it angered me that said story was a fictional creation in order to fit a formula. And I know the actual band members were influential in deciding, but maybe the band members shouldn't have a say.
That last statement might sound heartless, but when band members and musicians are heavily involved in the creation of their own movie, they often tend to paint themselves in a perfect light, which restricts the movie from diving into the drama. Just look at "Straight Outta Compton." The moral complexity of the rappers involved in that story could've made a great film. But since they were the ones making their own film, they painted themselves as heroes and victims, while completely leaving out all the bad things that they actually did. It wasn't an honest movie. And if you go watch "Bohemian Rhapsody," do you notice how all the band members who are still alive today never had any sort of drama in the movie? Now I know we're several paragraphs into this review and I haven't said much about the film I'm actually reviewing, but I consider this important for me to set the stage. I want to do my best to describe to you why "Rocketman" really worked for me while having fresh on your mind as to why "Bohemian Rhapsody" didn't. Even if you disagree with my assessments, at least you can understand where I'm coming from and you can know what I expect from a musical biopic because "Rocketman" proved to me that this genre can be done right.An interesting comparison to start things off here is that I'm not a huge fan of Elton John. Don't get me wrong, I've never had any problem with him. Anytime I've listened to his music, I've really enjoyed it. But if you tie me to a chair, point a gun to my head, and tell me to name five of his songs, I will resign and tell you to pull the trigger because I just don't know. Maybe that helped my case because I didn't have any preconceived notions as to what this movie should be. But I also think it could be a disadvantage because I didn't geek out every time one of his songs started playing like a lot of people did when any Queen song started playing in "Bohemian Rhapsody." There was no added nostalgic element that was there to boost my opinion of the film. Flipping it back to a positive, that ultimately was a good thing, I think, because it made me focus on the actual movie with the narrative and the character arcs. I think some people were so blinded by Queen nostalgia that they lost their mind every time a Queen song started playing to the point that they didn't care that the rest of the movie was crap. They were satisfied with their Queen concert. I didn't mind that element. I'll agree that the Live Aid performance was fun. But the rest of the movie still sucked.
That's why "Rocketman" was such a breath of fresh air for me. The focus of the movie wasn't on how Elton John came up with every big hit of his. The movie wasn't meant to solely be an Elton John concert. The focus here was the story and the themes surrounding Elton John's life. The movie starts with Elton John going to a support group and telling everyone of all the problems he has. It's at that point that we go back into the past as if he's telling his story of how he got to this point in his life. Yeah, there were times where it seemed like the movie was just happening and I began to get frustrated because I'm not that interested in simple montages of people's lives that don't have much of a point. But I was patient with this movie and it all ended up having a great point. There was a stark contrast to when he was a young boy striving to be a good musician as compared to when he was a successful superstar yet had an absolutely miserable life. He didn't know who he was. He had no feelings of love and care. He was very emotionally unstable. Yeah, he was a great performer and great singer. His unique style and fashion helped separate himself from the rest of the world, but behind the scenes he was a miserable human being and the movie did a great job of painting that picture.
The further we dove into this, the more emotionally invested I became in Elton John himself and everything that was happening around him. And I have to give major props to Taron Egerton for pulling off a truly moving performance. Now I've liked this guy in everything I've seen him in thus far. He was excellent in "Kingsman: The Secret Service," which was where he initially grabbed my attention. I've been following him ever since and he's brought it in every movie, from "Eddie the Eagle" to the animated movie "Sing" to "Kingsman: The Golden Circle." I even hear he was the one good thing about that awful "Robin Hood" movie last year that I skipped. So if he wasn't already on people's radars, "Rocketman" definitely will put him out there and maybe this helps him get even more dramatic roles in Oscar-baity films. I don't know if he'll get an Oscar nomination for "Rocketman" since this movie came out in the wrong half of the year for that, but if Rami Malek can win best actor for lip-syncing Freddie Mercury, you would think Taron Egerton should at least get nominated for nailing Elton John, especially since Taron actually did all of his own singing, which was great. Plus, I think he got all of Elton John's mannerisms down equally as well as Malek did for Mercury.
Speaking of directing, there were a lot of unique decisions made in terms of narrative that sets this apart. Several of the scenes get cleverly blended together with some unique editing. Some of the montages through time were very stylistic. This mostly goes in chronological order, but not always. I mean, we start from the end and often jump back to that support group for some cleverly done exposition. Sometimes the pacing is slow in order to give detail to the story, but other times things move super fast. I thought there was a good balance there. A lot of choices like that combined to make for a film that doesn't feel formulaic or tired at all. But the best decision, in my opinion, was how they used the music. This was a straight-up musical at times. There was a lot of fantasy elements that "Enchanted" pokes fun at in their movie with the line, "They know this song, too?" If you know what I mean. People just break out into song and dance with playful choreography, bright colors and outfits, floating pianos, Elton John launching into space. There were even times during somber moments where Elton John was singing and wandering while no else acknowledged his existence. I expected music with this, obviously, but I didn't expect full-blown musical in this manner.
In that note, this almost felt less like a musical biopic and more like "Mama Mia!" That's a strange comparison, but "Mama Mia!" crafts a fun musical around the music of Abba. "Rocketman" essentially does the same by crafting a fun musical around the music of Elton John. It just happens to be telling his story at the same time. Thus it was more than just concert sequences strung together to play his music. The music anchored the story and often came in to support the emotions happening at the time. It felt magical. Every time an Elton John song was played or performed, it felt like it had a direct purpose for the plot rather than feeling obligatory because they had to include the popular songs of the artist. Thus this made it a very unique and clever way of doing a musical biopic. Turn the thing into an actual musical. Based on some of the trailers, I had anticipated an element of fantasy and I wasn't sure what to think about that. But in this context, this was absolutely perfect and was the frosting on the cake of what was already a well done movie. All things said, this very well may be the movie of the summer for me so far (not counting "Avengers: Endgame"), which is saying something because I liked a lot of our May releases. Thus I will confidently give "Rocketman" a 9/10.
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