Rocketman really doesn’t need much of an introduction, as biopics have been a pretty common thing over the years and aren’t really hard to describe. Rocketman is a biopic about Elton John, the famous classic rock artist. Unlike some of the biopics out there, I kind of do feel like your enjoyment of Rocketman is going to slightly hinge on how much of a fan you are of Elton John. He’s my girlfriend’s favorite artist of all time, so she was in love with this movie. I enjoy Elton John’s music, but he’s never been one of my all-time favorites, so I enjoyed the movie, but not as much as my girlfriend. If you dislike Elton John, I’d imagine that you’re not going to like Rocketman all that much.

Talking about the plot is kind of unnecessary for the most part with biopics. Rocketman tells the story of Elton John’s life, plain and simple. The movie definitely focuses on his earlier years, with some text on-screen before the credits covering the other basic elements of his life in the past 25-30 years. The movie is definitely mostly about how his music career got started, and the struggles that he faced in his personal life through this period. An obvious big focal point is on his homosexuality, but we also get glimpses of his family life and his partnership with songwriter Bernie Toppin, which was perhaps my favorite element of the story.

This might come across as mean, but my biggest problem with the movie was just that I didn’t find Elton John’s story to be all that interesting. It has its moments for sure, but it’s otherwise pretty standard and cookie-cutter stuff. Family issues, drug problem, facing personal demons…these are all issues that we’ve seen explored in tons of other musical biopics, and often times done better. It’s not like it’s a bad story by any means, I just wasn’t as invested in it because I didn’t feel like I was watching anything groundbreaking.

The elements that Elton John fans are going to care the most about are all here though. Taron Egerton does a fantastic job playing Elton John, so we have as close to a living embodiment of his former self as we’re going to get here. The costumes are beautiful and look just like the famous ones that Elton John wore all those years ago. And, of course, the soundtrack is just wonderful. I felt like all of the best Elton John songs are featured here, so it’s likely not going to disappoint.

I do want to talk about the music a bit more in-depth really quickly though. While I don’t like comparing unrelated movies, it was hard for me to not think about the recent Bohemian Rhapsody movie about Queen from 2018 when watching Rocketman. I thought about this because these two movies take a much different approach to how they present their musical numbers. Bohemian Rhapsody made it feel like it was a part of the story, and its intention was to make the songs sound as much like the original Queen songs as possible. Rocketman takes more of a musical approach, where the musical numbers feel like fantastical performances that are more for the audience than the people in the film. Also, a lot of liberties are taken with how the songs sound. Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody, the goal here isn’t authenticity. Rocketman instead puts a new spin on some of its songs. While I can understand this being a divisive choice for some, I thought it worked in the movie’s favor very well. Like I said, I only use the Bohemian Rhapsody comparison because it’s two very different ways of presenting the soundtrack. You should know what you’re getting into here, but as long as you’re okay with that different kind of style, then I do think that the musical numbers are fantastic here.

That about sums up my thoughts on Rocketman. I thought the musical numbers, costumes, and performances were all really exceptional, but I thought that the story was a little slow and uninteresting at times. In the end, though, biopics like this tend to be more of a celebration of the artist’s life and work than anything else, so my recommendation for whether or not to watch it hinges more on whether or not you’re a fan of Elton John. The bigger you are a fan of him, the more I recommend Rocketman.

3.5/5