By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Dexter Fletcher
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard | Jamie Bell | Richard Madden | Taron Egerton
Country: canada, united_kingdom, united_states
Year: 2019
Running time: 121
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2066051
Thom says: “This is a tough film for me to review because although I’ve been a great lover of music throughout my life I never liked Elton John. Over the years he only had a minuscule number of songs I actually liked but, let’s face it, they were hard to avoid, so I certainly was overly familiar with the songs performed here with bold, colourful, Bollywood strokes. Egerton is fine here as John but the real standout is Jamie Bell as the exuberant Bernie Taupin, Elton’s partner-in-crime, rather li ke Gilbert & Sullivan sans the enmity that existed to that fabled pair. The film does seem to focus on the tawdry aspects of the superstar’s life. We all know he was married briefly to a woman, but they get rid of that sequence in all of 3 minutes. Sort of like Michael Jackson marrying Lisa Marie Presley, or Cicely Tyson married to Miles Davis. And then there was his addiction problems but the scenes showing him attending A.A. meetings seemed doubtful. If you really loved Elton John I can easily see how you might love this movie; and yet, there’s San Francisco Film Critic Mick LaSalle who swears he loved Elton John growing up and yet he picked this movie as one of the three worst of 2019. 3.5 cats“