MOVIE REVIEW: Rocketman (2019)

Dramatized biopics about famous people are getting quite famous these days and among these is Rocketman—a film that loosely depicts Elton John’s early life and rise to fame—which was released in 2019 to generally positive reviews. My partner had quite enjoyed Bohemian Rhapsody, so when we found Rocketman on Netflix recently, we wanted to give it a spin. This film stars Taron Egerton as Elton John and covers John’s life from youth up until he went into rehab in around 1990.

I must say that I’m pretty picky about movies that depict famous people, just because the dramatization of them often involves taking some artistic liberties with the truth that often don’t sit well with me. There’s always someone who was portrayed as being way worse than they were, some scene that’s really inaccurate, or some such. In this movie, word on the street was that his father, Stanley Dwight, was a much more attentive parent than he seemed in the movie and actually bought young Reginald Dwight his first piano, and there were huge complaints about the portrayal of Dick James, who frankly came across as J. Jonah Jameson from the Spiderman series but from the east end of London, whereas, in reality, people claimed that he was a very nice person, didn’t have a Cockney accent, and was not someone who ever swore. It’s a strange thing to dramatize things in such a way that uses a person’s real name but doesn’t even use their real accent. If you’re going to dress things up, I do think it’s respectful to change the person’s name as well. We all know that Hollywood takes liberties, so why not do it in a way that doesn’t outright slap some people in the face and hurt their reputations?

What I liked about Rocketman, however, was that it felt very glitzy and almost like a fever dream at times, in the way the scenes shifted into adaptations of Elton John’s songs. I can imagine that it suits Elton John’s style and spirit quite nicely. The actors—like Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, and Rob Stark Richard Madden—were fantastic in their roles and there was some very creative use of the music. They weren’t better than the originals, but they also didn’t seem like they were trying, they felt like, again, a strange fever dream of memories.

On the whole, the movie didn’t sit particularly well with me for a few reasons, despite being very entertaining and a genuinely good watch. The first is the aforementioned misleading portrayals of real-life people. The second, however, largely had to do with the interspersion of music anywhere, without showing dedication to when and why the songs were written. For example, having “Tiny Dancer” included in the movie is a no-brainer because it’s one of his most famous songs, but for a song that was famously written for Bernie Taupin’s first wife, Maxine Feibelman, it felt a bit strange to be used in a scene depicting John’s jealousy over Taupin meeting a woman at a party, as Maxine was not in the movie. “Your Song” was also known to not have been written for anyone specifically, but the camera pans dramatically between the two of them, clearly indicating that “Your Song” was about Taupin… weird vibe. Both of these incidents somehow felt off. You also have moments where John is pitching songs to Dick James and he’s singing songs that were famously written in the ‘80s in a scene set a decade or two earlier. Some of these things bristle when you’re including real-life things with a lot of creative fabrications, especially when a lot of the details of John’s life are very famously well-known.

I also can’t believe that they included his marriage to Renate Blauel but didn’t include the famous near-suicide because of his unhappiness with then-fiancée Linda Woodrow, which is detailed in the lyrics to the song “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” It seems both an astounding exclusion as well as a lost opportunity for the use of a very powerful song in what could have been an amazing scene. Another strange thing: why did the movie tell everyone that the name John in Elton John came from John Lennon, when it actually came from Long John Bauldry? That’s just outright misinformation and attributing something to The Beatles that they don’t deserve.

If there’s an elephant in the room to call out, I have a couple thoughts on the portrayal of homosexuality in the film. If people know Elton John for one thing, it’s for being one of the greatest pianists and performers of his time. If they know him for two things, it’s for being one of the world’s early breakthrough homosexual men. I remember, back as a kid in the ‘90s (you know, when calling someone “gay” was still an acceptable insult), you might call a person Liberace or Elton John if you wanted to call them gay (and no, I do not condone that sort of thing, but back as kids in the ‘90s, we didn’t know better). Queerness and Elton John were essentially synonymous in the ‘90s. He’s one of the main reasons that flamboyance is a huge part of gay culture.

So, on that note, the first thing I wanted to say was how tasteful the movie was in its portrayals of homosexuality. I haven’t seen a lot of queer sex scenes in movies in general, but the scene between Elton John and his manager, John Reid, was fantastic. It showed a lot of lust and passion and enough details without being too graphic. I thought it was really well done. I was also very impressed by how the movie included his homosexuality a handful of times, but focused far more heavily on the music and others aspects of his life. Ultimately, his sexuality is and has never been anyone’s business other than his own and it’s good to see Hollywood not groping awkwardly at every chance they can take to prove that they are pro-LGBTQ+. With that said, the fact that the movie didn’t include the public’s discovery of his homosexuality surprised me, just because he is such an icon and one of the originals who was breaking barriers. The movie addresses his mother finding out, as well as some friends, but never his fans, and it feels like that’s something big and important enough that it could have been included, even if they didn’t want to make a big deal about it. However, I do again have to applaud them for focusing on the artist and not his sexuality, because in the end, that’s the most important thing.

So with that all said, I do think the movie is worth watching at least once. If you don’t know a lot about Elton John and his history of drug and alcohol abuse, it’s a very dark and eye-opening look into the world of rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘60s through ‘90s, and if you just want to watch some glitzy drama and learn about him, this is a great starting point. The portrayal of his downward spiral is quite visceral and painful, yet the movie leaves you on a very hopeful note. However, if you want a really magnificent viewpoint into that ‘70s music scene that doesn’t step on anyone’s toes but is based off real-life experiences, I would steer you into checking out Almost Famous, which is one of my all-time favorite movies.