“Rocketman”: Testing my Musical Tolerance

Have you seen the Elton John biopic “Rocketman”?

I have. And for the first half of the film, I was a bit disappointed. For a biopic, it uses fantasy—it’s like a life told in a dreamscape, and when dancers suddenly start prancing at a fair and singing “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” the movie didn’t quite work that well for me. I wasn’t into its universe. And I don’t like a title that uses “Alright” rather than “All Right.” It’s two words, Sir Elton.

I didn’t hate the movie. I don’t hate Elton John music. But neither is central to my universe. John’s music, for me, was an artifact of the late 1970s, not a great musical era, in my opinion.

Still, the movie grew on me and slowly drew me in. The Alcoholics Anonymous scenes that had been odd at the start become a bit more real, the segue between them and memory more powerful. By the time of the pool scene, the fantastical, dreamy nature of the story telling was going down more smoothly
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And, in the end, I did enjoy the film. I am not even sure why I resisted at first. After all, I grew up on musicals, so I’m not one of those people who are irritated when dancers show up and interrupt the narrative. I recall a co-worker at a previous job 20 years complaining that she had watched a Clint Eastwood movie, and all of a sudden there was all this singing.

She was complaining about “Paint Your Wagon,” to me the best and most entertaining Clint Eastwood movie of all time.

The early albums my parents bought, besides Homer and Jethro, were Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Maybe it was that the music in this movie didn’t always fit or serve the narrative all that well. Maybe I didn’t relate to the fantasy early 1960s theme. Maybe the indifferent parents seemed too two-dimensional for real people in a real life.

But by the end, the rumination on the nature of rock and roll fame and its price was interesting.

And, in the end, I couldn’t help but wonder about a few things. I would have liked to see “Candle in the Wind,” for example—either or both versions. Or a bit more about his financial crash and recovery, as well as his personal one.

It seemed a more straight telling of a narrative, despite its dreamlike feel, than “Bohemian Rhapsody,” for example, and yet the Queen film was more powerful. Maybe I’m just a sucker for cheap movie emotional tricks.

Maybe I need to return more to my Rodgers and Hammerstein roots.