Rocketman: Blast off!

Rocketman (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug use and sexual content
By Derrick Bang

Elton John’s life is the stuff of legend anyway, so the fantasy touches certainly don’t feel out of place in director Dexter Fletcher’s audaciously opulent jukebox musical.

And so it begins: Reggie Dwight (Taron Egerton, left) and Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell)
are excited to discover that their musical strengths perfectly complement each other.

Granted, it’s disconcerting when little Matthew Illesley — as young Reginald Kenneth Dwight — warbles the first few lines of “The Bitch Is Back,” which promptly turns into a lavish dance production involving all the denizens of his family’s suburban Middlesex neighborhood. But Fletcher cleverly sets the film’s tone with that number, particularly with respect to cinematographer George Richmond’s clever use of color.

Nor is this sequence the first eyebrow-lift. The film actually opens when the adult Elton (Taron Egerton), in outrageous performance dress, strides down an institutional hallway in order to join a group counseling session at a fancy rehabilitation clinic. His saga subsequently unfolds as an extended flashback, with occasional returns to the present; as the story progresses, Elton sheds more and more of the costume, reflecting his willingness to be increasingly candid.

A rather obvious metaphor, but it works.

Rocketman covers Elton John’s life from childhood, in the late 1950s, to 1990, when he had a God-given moment of lucidity — amid a downward spiral of drugs, alcohol and depression — and wisely checked himself into rehab. Given a music library well in excess of 300 songs, armed with Bernie Taupin’s alternately energetic and poignant lyrics, it obviously wasn’t difficult for Fletcher to highlight each step of Reggie’s life with a cleverly appropriate (or archly ironic) tune.

Most of the 22 song choices and stagings are inspired; a few are a bit forced, a little too on the nose. They don’t arrive in anything approaching chronological sequence, but rather as suits a given scene (hence the aforementioned startling use of “The Bitch Is Back”).

Lee Hall’s screenplay occasionally loses steam, mostly during the second act (which seems crazy, given the arc of John’s career, but pacing here is crucial). Even so, the film’s overall impact is breathtaking: both because of the music, and its presentation, and Egerton’s flat-out astonishing performance.

At times, he looks, sounds and acts more like Elton John than the man himself. It’s not merely a matter of Egerton nailing John’s defiantly sassy, mildly pugnacious stage presence; the actor also has impressive vocal chops (as is obvious to anybody who’s seen his recent duets with John, on “Tiny Dancer” and “Rocket Man”).

At the core, though, Egerton simply is a terrific actor; he keeps us enthralled, from moment to moment, via bravura performance chops and sheer force of will. In a film laden with powerful scenes, none is better than John’s reluctant decision — necessitated by events — to admit to his mother that he’s gay. By telephone. From a phone booth in front of a performance hall. 

Fletcher and Richmond go for a tight close-up on Egerton’s features, as he glares, scowls, grimaces, frowns, twitches and glowers his way into working up the courage to say the words. It’s a bravura moment, because Egerton absolutely sells the poor guy’s panic.

This also points to the moral center of this take on John’s life: the adrenaline-fueled terror that no matter how flamboyantly extreme he becomes, he’ll never outrun the shy little boy from Middlesex, who craved — but rarely (if ever) received — his parents’ love.

Indeed, Stanley and Sheila Dwight don’t fare too well in this telling (which, it’s important to note, involved John’s full participation). Steven Mackintosh makes Stanley a cold fish utterly unable — or, perhaps more truthfully, unwilling — to show affection. He hasn’t the slightest interest in his son; the best that can be said is that Dad isn’t physically abusive. Several of this film’s most heartbreaking moments involve Mackintosh, whose handling of Stanley is cruelly indifferent.

Sheila (Bryce Dallas Howard) is more intriguing. On the one hand, she’s self-centered and similarly aloof from her only child; on the other hand, she’s quick to notice young Reggie’s jaw-dropping facility at a keyboard, and readily encourages piano lessons (perhaps as a means of getting the boy out of her hair). And if she later wrinkles her nose when her maturing son begins to demonstrate outré sensibilities, well, she doesn’t turn her back on him. Which is something.

Howard nails this woman’s complexities; her most telling quirk here is the ability to smile benignly while delivering an unexpectedly cutting remark. Whiplash, every time.

Fortunately, no-holds-barred love radiates from Reggie’s grandmother Ivy, who — as portrayed with angelic grace by Gemma Jones — likely is the person we all have to thank, for the existence of Elton John’s career.

The strongest supporting performances come from the two crucial men in John’s life, starting with Taupin, played here with understated sensitivity by Jamie Bell. The sequence where the two meet, and begin their collaborative relationship, is artistic magic. They sit across from each other in a tea shop, each young man’s wary hesitation melting ever more rapidly, as they recognize that they’re gonna be perfect together.

Taupin is a passionate poet; lyrics flow from his pen with the ease of breathing. He hands rapidly scribbled pages to John, who then sits at a piano, the matching chords dancing from his fingers with similar speed.

Taupin eventually blossoms into the equivalent of a devoted brother: definitely not a lover, as this film repeatedly insists. Bell makes him the epitome of serenity and sympathy as the Taupin/John working relationship becomes the stuff of industry fable; when John’s hedonistic tendencies increasingly overwhelm what remains of common sense, Bell’s eyes flicker with an anxious light. And, eventually, raw grief.

And yet Taupin has the wisdom to recognize that John must (one hopes) dig himself out of the hole that just gets deeper and deeper. Bell makes it clear that patience is the greatest of virtues.

(In a droll bit of serendipity, Bell made his acting debut in 2000’s Billy Elliot; John provided the music when the film became a smash-hit stage musical in 2005.)

Taupin’s loyal kindness is contrasted by Richard Madden’s brutally callous portrayal of John Reid, who ultimately became John’s manager for 28 years, until the relationship disintegrated in the wake of the superstar’s discovery of a £20 million “gap” in his finances.

But that comes long after this film’s events. They meet here in Los Angeles, following John’s career-making debut at the Troubadour (impudently replicated here in one of Fletcher’s most exciting production numbers, set to “Crocodile Rock”). Madden’s Reid is suave, immaculately dressed and almost omnisciently perceptive; he senses stardom in this feisty upstart, and says as much. Given Madden’s cultured Scottish accent, who would disbelieve him?

They become lovers, their first physical encounter taking place with a ferocity that the actual John insists is authentic. But once their relationship is augmented by a business component, Reid blossoms into a villain of cold, ruthless, Machiavellian evil. Madden’s performance becomes positively Shakespearean, his posh appearance now granting Reid a reptilian aura. Several third-act confrontations are breathtakingly shocking.

Sidebar supporting characters are equally well cast. Charlie Rowe is boyishly enthusiastic as Ray Williams, the sympathetic Liberty Records A&R manager who hands John — then in the early stages of song-writing — an unopened envelope containing some of Taupin’s lyrics. Tate Donovan is a hoot as Troubadour manager Doug Weston, and Rachel Muldoon makes the most of her brief appearance as Kiki Dee, during a studio recording of the duet “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.”

On that note, Celinde Schoenmaker is heartbreaking in a mostly silent performance as Renate Blauel, whom John impulsively married in 1984, for all the wrong reasons.

All production elements are top-notch. Adam Murray’s choreography is vibrant and inventive, and the production sequence that accompanies “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” is jaw-dropping. It’s equally fascinating to watch John’s performance persona evolve over the course of the more than 60 outfits supplied by costume designer Julian Day.

Music supervisor Ian Neil does a similarly great job, integrating the numerous vocal performances with an underscore that links scenes with quieter instrumental reprises of key songs, notably “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

We live in lucky times, to have gotten another rock ’n’ roll biopic with the exhilarating intensity — and dramatic chops — of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Long may Rocketman soar.