Rocketman: Elton John’s sparkliest spectacle yet

Rocketman is a 2019 biographical musical film based on the life of musician Elton John. Directed by Dexter Fletcher and written by Lee Hall, it stars Taron Egerton as John, with Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, and Bryce Dallas Howard. The film follows John’s early days as a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music to his musical partnership with Bernie Taupin. The film is titled after John’s 1972 song “Rocket Man”.

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Rocketman holds an approval rating of 90% based on 312 reviews, with an average rating of 7.64/10. The site’s critical consensus reads, “It’s going to be a long, long time before a rock biopic manages to capture the highs and lows of an artist’s life like Rocketman.” On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A–” on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average 4 out of 5 stars and a 69% “definite recommend”.

Steve Pond of TheWrap said: “It’s all grand and fun and corny; a musical fantasy that reaches for the sky and gets there often enough to make it diverting.” The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw gave the film three stars out of five, saying Egerton did a “good impression of the flamboyant musician” and writing: “Rocketman is an honest, heartfelt tribute to Elton John’s music and his public image.” In the same newspaper, Mark Kermode gave it five stars, writing that “Fletcher is the real star of this show, a director whose enthusiasm for musical storytelling shines through every frame”.

Chicago Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper also greatly enjoyed the film, giving it three-and-a-half stars out of four, praising it’s “almost documentary-level eye for detail when it comes to re-creating historic chapters such as the sold-out shows at Dodger Stadium in 1975 when Elton wore a sequined Dodgers uniform and belted out one hit after another to the adoring masses.” Conversely, Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com had mixed feelings about Rocketman, awarding it two-and-a-half stars out of four and stating that the film is a “formulaic, paint-by-numbers biopic.”