“Real love’s hard to come by. So you find a way to cope without it.”
– Elton John
SYNOPSIS: A musical fantasy about the fantastical human story of Elton John’s breakthrough years. – via IMDB
Well, this certainly wasn’t Bohemian Rhapsody. Not that I really expected that per se, because I did watch the preview and I wasn’t sold then, but I didn’t think it would be quite so… bland and generic?
Bryce Dallas Howard knocks it out of the park. Honestly, what a reprehensible character. Excellent. However, that does not detract from the fact that the characters were all incredibly one-dimensional. Taron Egerton and Jamie Bell both perform admirably in their roles, and are the only two with actual fleshed out characters. The costumes were really well designed, and really reminds you how Elton John was this larger than life character.
One thing that really got under my skin is how this movie squeezed these bizarre musical numbers in between everything, making the movie not flamboyant or musical enough to be a musical, but the musical numbers were jarring enough to yank you out of the narrative every single time, leaving you with the feeling that the movie couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be. I know some have praised the choice of it being a musical fantasy, but it just didn’t quite work for me.
Anyway, as you can tell, I wasn’t the biggest fan of this movie. It is not the worst thing you will ever sit down to watch, but it certainly feels like an extremely one-sided story. The music is really good, the performances are fine, but the movie is long and, ultimately, won’t really be remembered.
The Sporadic Chronicles 