Review: Rocketman

It’s not that I think “Rocketman” is a bad movie – while I wouldn’t describe it as great, watching it was an enjoyable if sometimes cringey experience. I think its that no matter the director, actor, writer, what have you, something fails to translate when you take a story from the stereo to the silver screen.

There are musicals and there are movies, musical movies, and movies about music. With “Rocketman,” the format of a movie about a musician that is also a musical, fun as it was, didn’t work for me. It is hard, at least in the present day, to put choreographed dance numbers and random bursts of song into a movie theater without it descending into such depths of cheesiness that even the biggest Elton John fan isn’t left feeling a little…weird? Confused? A moment that sticks out for me in this regard is the scene where Elton John overdoses in the pool and then breaks out into a choreographed number of Rocketman. The movie goes into some pretty dark moments of Elton John’s life, yet the often clunky breakages into song made it all feel a bit trite.

And as good as Taron Egerton’s voice is, I truly wish that they had kept in the original music. How can you have a movie about Elton John without any songs (okay, one) sung by the man himself? It seemed a strange choice to me, especially given the fact that Elton John and David Furnish produced the film. It’s not like they couldn’t have gotten the rights.

Nevertheless, I’d go see this movie for two reasons. Number one…the be yourself message is something anyone can smile about. Number two…lets keep movie theaters alive for another summer! Seriously, though, my Mom and I were the only people in a theater for 200.