But the problem with using camp and melodrama to tell a story is that eventually you may have to move beyond camp into ordinary, real drama: the interwoven scenes of Elton's 1990 stay in rehab try to ground the film in gritty reality, but end up bumping up against the film's fantasies, leading to an unfortunately cringe-worthy scene of release and recovery. Hall and Fletcher give Elton one or two moments when he glimpses his true self behind the facade, but they're really just pauses between (the great) songs. If you go in to Rocketman expecting the kind of based-on-real-events life story that Elton would screen in his imagination, up awake at 4 a.m. thinking up new, theatrical arrangements of his most well-known songs, then you'll have fun with it. In public, Elton John was in many ways a caricature of himself, and Rocketman interprets his songbook as joyously, if as flatly, as a cartoon.
Friday, June 14, 2019
His Song, His Story
But the problem with using camp and melodrama to tell a story is that eventually you may have to move beyond camp into ordinary, real drama: the interwoven scenes of Elton's 1990 stay in rehab try to ground the film in gritty reality, but end up bumping up against the film's fantasies, leading to an unfortunately cringe-worthy scene of release and recovery. Hall and Fletcher give Elton one or two moments when he glimpses his true self behind the facade, but they're really just pauses between (the great) songs. If you go in to Rocketman expecting the kind of based-on-real-events life story that Elton would screen in his imagination, up awake at 4 a.m. thinking up new, theatrical arrangements of his most well-known songs, then you'll have fun with it. In public, Elton John was in many ways a caricature of himself, and Rocketman interprets his songbook as joyously, if as flatly, as a cartoon.
Labels:
2019,
Autobiography,
bernie taupin,
biography,
camp,
dexter fletcher,
elton john,
lee hall,
melodrama,
movie,
movie review,
movie reviews,
movies,
music,
rock and roll,
rocketman,
spectacle
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