Kritiken

What a pleasure it is to see a widescreen rock 'n' roll quasi-musical and period piece in which every scene and sequence has been thought through at the level of individual shots, and where every idea glides kinetically into every other idea.

As for the movie's content, "Rocketman" attributes John's rise to fame to killer piano skills and the usual self-help aphorisms (the singer is advised to "kill the person you were born to be in order to become the person you want to be"; ponder that for a moment).

This is a genre-bending musical biopic that reworks Elton John’s greatest hits into dazzling choreographed setpieces. While Rocketman does occasionally feel contrived – with the early childhood scenes bordering on formulaic – the musical numbers are its greatest strength and add unexpected surrealism.

Directed by Dexter Fletcher and starring Taron Egerton as the spangled one himself, Rocketman is magnificent and ridiculous, a feathered melanage of clichés and originality, of respectful homage and unrepentant nostalgia.

Ideally, a movie like this would either fully sweep its audience up in a rush of emotion or else take them out of their comfort zones. Rocketmandoes neither.