Rocketman

 

Director: Dexter Fletcher
Starring: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Gemma Jones, Bryce Dallas Howard, Stephen Graham, Steven Mackintosh, Tate Donovan, Matthew Illesley, Kit Connor, Celinde Shoenmaker
Running Time: 121 min.
Rating: R

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)  

It was never going to be an easy road for Dexter Fletcher's Elton John musical biopic, Rocketman, especially following Bohemian Rhapsody, for which Rami Malek won the Oscar for inhabiting legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. And when considering the same director actually stepped to finish the latter film, it makes comparisons between the two especially unavoidable. But if all those criticisms that Rhapsody played as a paint-by-numbers biopic seemed unfair, that's because they were, rehashing the same old arguments everyone makes about the genre. 

Ignoring that biopics are supposed to cover the full scope and meaning of a figure's life, the complaints just never seem to cease whenever one is released, regardless of its quality. Whether it's manufactured outrage at a script daring to depict events either in or out of chronological order, including scenes that allegedly never happened, or even worse, ones that did. But what no one seems willing to admit is that the format has been around this long because when it works, it really works, and is usually only as compelling as its subject allows. It's also what the fillmaker chooses to do within that admittedly rigid framework that can make all the difference, with casting a bit more crucial than it would be otherwise.

By these standards, Rocketman, which was widely praised for sidestepping a lot of typical genre tropes, could still be considered a "standard" biopic, with the important caveat that we should probably start reassessing that designation as a compliment. It may finally be time to admit that biopics can be fun and well-made, especially when the very structure of this musical does as good a job as any of conveying the essence of that person. 

Despite some broad similarities in their outsized personalities and career trajectories, Elton John isn't Freddie Mercury and any film covering his life would have to be an entirely different animal. Elton might be harder to tackle since his music's been played to death for decades on end, with few clammoring for the onscreen dramatization of an artist who could be considered overexposed, at least compared to Mercury, who only now seems to be getting his due. If both performers had a flare for flamboyance and theatrics, that's the area where Elton was incomparable, with Fletcher wisely using that as the film's driving engine. 

Elton John might be the only artist where a full-blown, spare no expenses musical about their life scored to all his hits feels completely appropriate. It's what Across The Universe could have been if they didn't try to shoehorn a fictional story into the Beatles' entire song catalogue. This takes the opposite route, as Elton's songs legitimately feel like an organic extension of his life, inseparable from the journey we see unfolding in front of us. 

If it's less dramatically powerful than Rhapsody, that's only because of the tone of Elton as a person and artist, which Taron Egerton magnificently captures in a nomination-worthy performance. A staggering visual achievement loaded with dazzling musical sequences, it digs deeply into his drug use, conflicted sexuality and unhappy childhood, before settling on an ending that feels slightly less than what it deserves. But it's all undeniably in lock-step with Elton's entire persona and career, making it impossible to walk away without a greater appreciation of everything he's brought to the table. 

From an addiction rehab center, Elton John (Egerton) recounts the story of his life via flashbacks, all the way back to his days growing up in 1950's Britain, when the then-Reggie Dwight (Matthew Illesley) grappled with crippling shyness as a child, as well as rocky relationship with his strict, uninterested military father Stanley (Steven Mackintosh). Some relief comes in his bonding with carfree mom Sheila (Bryce Dallas Howard) and even more supportive grandmother, Ivy (Gemma Jones) over his burgeoning musical talent. 

After excelling at piano from an early age, Reggie starts playing pubs as a teen (played by Kit Connor), gravitating toward rock music before eventually landing in a band and getting signed to a label deal by cigar-chomping DJM chief Dick James (Stephen Graham). Re-christened as "Elton John," it's Reggie's  introduction to songwriter and eventual best friend Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) that causes his career to soar to unimaginable heights in the 70's, only to come crashing down when he enters a toxic relationship with manipulative and abusive manager John Reid (Richard Madden). Falling into an abyss of wild debauchery fueled by self-destructive drug and alcohol abuse, Elton must face his personal demons head-on in order to save both his life and career, and perhaps finally be at peace with where Reggie Dwight ends and Elton John begins.

Lee Hall's script is meticulously contructed around some of the artist's biggest hits, providing the soundtrack to the scenes and sequences of his life. The concept itself seems hokey on paper and shouldn't work, if not for the fact that the execution is virtually flawless.While it may be initially jarring to see Elton walk into rehab in a flamboyantly bright orange devil costume before we abruptly flash back to the 1950's with characters in the street singing "The Bitch is Back," it's definitely going somewhere. Fletcher really hits the ground running with this structure, which manages to hit on all the key points on Reggie's path toward becoming Elton, with each musical sequence perfectly encapsulating a specific snapshot in time. 

Movie musicals can be off-putting in the sense that they're not stage productions, nor should they be. So when a character spontaneously bursts into song it can fall flat on its face if the story, tone, direction or energy is off. There's a reason the genre isn't for everyone's tastes, and since it's so rarely pulled off successfully, it's easy to be skeptical. But this is one of the few recent ones that really gets it right, as there isn't a single song in here that feels squeezed in because they're due for a big number.

This is who Elton John is, and whether you're a fan or not, it's impossible to deny that this captures that in a bottle. His songs are who he is, making Fletcher's approach work in a way it probably wouldn't for other artists. But we get the impression that he considered himself a performer first, and what Egerton pushes through is that love of showmanship, which practically burns through the screen, making the fact that the actor actually does his own singing (really well) seem almost secondary. 

All this is evident in the film's most memorable musical sequence, when a then low-key Elton first taps into his larger-than-life persona and brings down the Troubadour with "Crocodile Rock," creating an electric atmosphere that just builds and builds, reaching a cresendo that literally lifts him and an enraptured audience off their feet. Brilliantly filmed and staged by Fletcher, it signals from that point on nothing will be the same for the former Reginald Dwight, as does a later underwater scene that visually juxtaposes the movie's title song with his suicide attempt. 

If Elton was the consumate showman, the artist component is best reflected in his friendship with collaborator Taupin, which went well beyond songwriting despite remaining completely platonic. As the only person who saw Elton exactly for who he was, it ends up being the only relationship in the performer's life that doesn't seem entirely transactional. Whether he's pining for love and approval from his parents or an emotionally and physically abusive manager. attempting to downplay his homosexuality in a failed marriage to friend Renate Blauel (Celinde Schoenmaker) Taupin's unwavering committment to this partnership during Elton's darkest days make their union the film's most memorable, if certainly his least toxic. 

Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody or the Brian Wilson biopic, Love and Mercy from a few years back, you don't get too much insight into the "process" of creating because this simply isn't that kind of movie, nor where the bread is buttered when it comes to Elton's career. What we do get are the emotional highs and devastating lows, which strangely seem to exist on the same plane because of Egerton's performance. The framing device of him telling his story from rehab works because the actor does legitimately play him as a spectator to his own life. In even the biggest successes there's this undercurrent of sadness that when combined with his startling resemblance to the real person and painstakingly accurate recreations of key moments (such as the Dodger Stadium performance), make for quite the experience. 

The ending's only flaw is it's one of those familar epilogues that updates you on the singer's life, which seems completely unnecessary unless you've been living under a rock for the past decade. It also looks like something straight out of a cheap TV special, ranking as one of the more forgettable of its kind and almost completely at odds with the visionary sequence preceding it (a mind-blowing recreation of his "I'm Still Standing" video). But this is actually a small complaint since that video will be remembered as the real closer anyway, as well as a reminder that Elton's journey, unlike so many of his contemporaries, will always be more closely associated with triumph than tragedy. But what's so suprising about Rocketman are the wild detours it takes in showing us how close he actually came to burning out his own fuse.

Eddie The Eagle

Director: Dexter Fletcher
Starring: Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, Christopher Walken, Iris Berben, Mark Benton, Keith Allen, Jo Hartley, Jim Broadbent
Running Time: 105 min.
Rating: PG-13

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

Besides being at the center of an inspiring underdog story that seems tailor made for the big screen, the qualities possessed by British Olympic ski jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards will be familiar to anyone who's ever seen an underdog sports movie. A person who's so singularly focused on achieving the impossible that they're not taken seriously in the slightest. They either have a lot of guts or are really dense, and through much of Dexter Fletcher's deliriously entertaining biopic Eddie The Eagle, our title character is confronted by naysayers informing him it's the latter. Whether that be a parent, his teammates or coaches, the one thing they can all agree on is that he's a lost cause. And while much of that is realistically warranted and grounded in concern for his safety, more of it has to do with how he looks and acts. Viewers who think they know how it's all going to pan out are completely right, mainly because it did actually happen and the scenario represents one of the most reliable and predictable movie formulas around. But when it's executed well, it's also really effective, and this is one of those great reminders of that.

As a young boy growing up in Great Britain in the 1970's, Eddie Edwards (Taron Egerton) always dreamed of one day competing in the Olympics. Awkward and hardly much of an natural athlete, he practiced various events in the backyard and around the house, frequently encouraged by his supportive mother, Janette (Jo Harley) while his hard-nosed father, Terry (Keith Allen) dismisses his Olympic dreams as a time waster. After succeeding as a skier as a teen, he sets his sights on the Winter Games, eventually taking an interest in ski jumping.

With Great Britain having gone decades without a ski jumping team and the British Olympic Committee determined to keep him out, Eddie begins training in Germany, where he meets former American ski jumping champion turned alcoholic snow groomer, Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman). Still bitter from his acrimonious exit from the sport, he initially refuses Eddie's pleas to train him, dismissing him, as an unteachable klutz. But Eddie's tenacity and the verbal abuse he takes from the more experienced Norwegian jumpers causes Bronson to take him under his wing, attempting the impossible in helping him qualify for the 1988 Winter Olympics. But what might be the bigger challenge is him being taken seriously once he gets there.

Even during a time when amateurs like Eddie could actually qualify for the Olympics, what he accomplished was pretty newsworthy. Then again, the sports movie template is built on true stories exactly like this, so while the amount of truth always varies, it all really comes down to the execution. This has a lot going for it, including some excellent early practice scenes establishing the young, awkward Eddie's Olympic fanaticism, seeking inspiration from books like "Moments of Glory" and "My Life in Ski Jumping," the latter being the memoir of Bronson's former, estranged coach, Warren Sharp (Christopher Walken). Once we get to the actual competition, the action scenes are well staged by Fletcher, at times even inducing a sense of dread as we look down through the eyes of this clueless rookie who's talked himself into believing he can jump from 40 to 70 and then eventually 90 feet.

More often than not, Bronson's job seems to be stopping this kid from killing himself, reluctantly and against his better judgment evolving into a coach and mentor. It's only upon realizing that with a lot work, he may actually have a shot. Sure to be overlooked, Mark Margeson's throwback musical score stands as one of the year's big achievements in marrying a film's era with its story and thematic content. Somehow sounding like a blissfully bizarre cross between Vangelis' Chariots Fire, Hans Zimmer's Days of Thunder and the theme from The Greatest American Hero, it's so steeped in the scores of that era that many will probably assume it was lifted from an 80's sports movie. That extra touch goes a surprisingly long way here, as it's tough to imagine certain scenes working as well without it in the background, or even in some more obvious moments, the foreground.

Disguised enough behind crooked eyeglasses and oversized clothes to bare a striking physical resemblance to the film's real life inspiration, Taron Egerton makes Eddie endearing, gutsy and likable, portraying him in the best tradition of screen sports underdogs. In the too few instances when the material calls for him to get serious, he proves capable of that as well. Playing a fictional composite of the real-life Eddie's various coaches, it isn't a backhanded compliment to say Hugh Jackman gives one of his more charismatic recent performances as Bronson Peary.

Effortlessly owning every scene he's in, it was a good move to cast Jackman and an even better one to completely ignore reality in favor of letting him help create this character whose relationship with the protagonist drives the story. He also has the film's best musical moment, when Bronson takes to the slopes to show his pupil and a shocked Norwegian ski team how it's done. Like most sports movies, it's usually as much about the mentor as his student and Bronson still has some demons to deal with concerning how his career ended, permanently damaging his relationship with his ex-coach. Of course redemption can only come through coaching Eddie.

Possibly the strongest aspect of the entire film is the fleeting acknowledgment, even made by Bronson himself, that this kid is in danger of becoming a joke, viewed as nothing more than a circus sideshow act to be laughed at by fans and the ratings-seeking media.  If he fails to deliver then his 15 minutes are up, and Olympic history won't look kindly on him, if at all. Briefly, the script explores this fascinating idea before safely retreating to comfortable confines of its formula. That's fine, but you can't help but think it's a reminder that as immersive as these sports movies are, there is a creative glass ceiling in place that very few have been able to shatter.

It's slightly disappointing when the screenplay leans more heavily on the comedic elements than the interesting implications of Eddie's popularity, but this just isn't that type of movie. That much is clear with the casting of Christopher Walken as Bronson's legendary Olympic coach. On one hand, his presence in any film is always a welcome event, but accompanying it is this undeniable expectation of weirdness. Surprisingly, there isn't too much of that here and he does a fine job in his one major dramatic scene, adding to rather than distracting from the movie's inspirational climax.

It's hard to find a genuine crowd pleaser that goes down as easy as this, and regardless of how many details or facts were adjusted along the way, whatever was done worked in terms of providing maximum entertainment value. Fitting comfortably in the wheelhouse of similarly themed sports films like The Rookie, Miracle, Remember The Titans, Invincible, Cool Runnings and the more recent McFarland, USA, Eddie The Eagle may even be a cut above a few of those, managing to get more little things right.

Whether it's the performances, the direction, the soundtrack or the skiing scenes, there are are many moments where you think it will take flight like it's protagonist, ascending to upper echelon of sports movies occupied by the likes of Rocky, Rudy or The Karate Kid. The story was certainly ripe for it and there's an artfulness in Fletcher's filmmaking that suggests that if the writers took things a little more seriously, it could have gotten there. And while that's an ironic criticism given its subject, I'm not completely sure this would be as enjoyable if it did. So what we're left with is a solid, inspiring mainstream sports movie that can be recommended with unqualified praise to basically anyone. And that counts for a lot.