Rocket powered romp! BRIAN VINER enjoys an exhilarating romp through Elton John's evolution from honky tonk pianist to global superstar
Rocketman (15)
Verdict: It's a blast!
There is an irresistible temptation to compare Rocketman, the story of Elton John's thrilling evolution from an unhappy little boy in semi-detached Middlesex suburbia into a rock superstar, with Bohemian Rhapsody, last year's Freddie Mercury biopic.
The two men were born only six months apart. Mercury's family settled in suburban Middlesex, too. They both became famous around the same time. They were both irrepressibly flamboyant, both insanely talented. They both had to come to terms with their homosexuality when it was still technically illegal, still shameful. And both films have the same director, Dexter Fletcher (who took the reins on Bohemian Rhapsody when the original director, Bryan Singer, was fired).
The difference is that Rocketman is a much, much better picture. Maybe you loved Bohemian Rhapsody, which was a critical flop and a commercial smash, but I thought it a bog-standard biopic, which chugged along unremarkably until the crescendo of the Live Aid concert.
Taron Egerton stars as Elton John in Rocketman, an exhilarating film
Maybe Singer should take the rap, because this time Fletcher has made a visual spectacular, as flamboyant as young Reginald Kenneth Dwight himself became after he turned into Elton Hercules John.
It's a simply wonderful film — in which Taron Egerton gives a humdinger of a lead performance — and if it doesn't win an Oscar for costume design alone, I'll eat his hat.
Using a group therapy session as a device to whisk us back and forth in time, it shows how young Reggie was starved of affection by his remote father (Steven Mackintosh), and received precious little, either, from his flighty mother (Bryce Dallas Howard).
He at least had a loving grandmother (Gemma Jones). But it was a miserable childhood. I was at last week's world premiere in Cannes, with Elton himself in the stalls, and watching his life story in his presence felt uncomfortably like an intrusion into private anguish.
And yet, even though it pulls no punches about his reliance on drugs and booze, his bulimia, his sometimes epic bad behaviour, much of it fuelled in those early years by agonies over his sexuality, Rocketman is a hugely exhilarating picture.
Jamie Bell (right) also gives a fascinating performance as Elton's lyricist Bernie Taupin
It is whimsical, at times fantastical, and all the better for it. Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody, it's a musical, which brilliantly uses Elton's songs (convincingly sung by Egerton) to convey the electrifying ups and precipitous downs of his life. Compared with the Mercury film... well, actually, you can't really compare them. Rocketman is on a different planet. It goes by with a whoosh.
Some of the song-and-dance routines take your breath away. There's a glorious performance of Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, evoking Reggie's teenage years in Pinner, and a surreal sequence set to Rocketman itself, by which time he's become Elton and overdoses during a party at his Los Angeles mansion.
Incidentally, the film tells us that he chose John as his surname after spotting a picture of John Lennon in the office of his manager, Dick James (Stephen Graham), though I'm told that, actually, it was a nod to bluesman Long John Baldry.
Best of all, we get front-row tickets to his famous 1970 concerts at the Troubadour club in West Hollywood, which made him a star in America. There, in an inspired flight of fancy, he and the audience start levitating while he performs Crocodile Rock.
It is at the Troubadour that he meets the man destined not only to become his new manager, squeezing out an embittered James, but also his lover.
This is the manipulative, promiscuous John Reid (Richard Madden). There has been much talk about a sex scene between the two of them, but let's just say it's all perfectly in context.
Soon, Reid has become more responsible than anyone for Elton's descent into a personal hell, the bits that aren't self- propelled, anyway. The only person who shows him unconditional loyalty and support is his long-time lyricist Bernie Taupin, delightfully played by Jamie Bell. Almost 20 years have passed, by the way, since Bell made a name for himself in Billy Elliot. That film was scripted by Lee Hall, who is also the writer of this one. He has made a fabulous job of it, yet it's what he didn't write that will fill your head as you leave the cinema: the songs. It's hardly a spoiler to reveal what the last of them is. Yes, whatever you think of Sir Elton, Rocketman unashamedly invites us to celebrate the fact that... he's still standing.
- A longer review ran in the Mail last week.
Great genie, but no great genius
Aladdin (PG)
Verdict: Princess Jasmine steals the show
Disney's live-action remake of Aladdin turns out to be an all-you-can-eat international buffet of a film, with Will Smith's engaging blue genie topping a diverse singing, rapping, and occasionally Bollywood-dancing cast.
The traditional Middle-Eastern tale of a ruffian, a princess, a magic lamp and the struggle for social mobility is mashed up into a garish theme park fantasy in this family-friendly spectacular, but the surprise star here is British actress Naomi Scott as a feisty Princess Jasmine.
Playing opposite Mena Massoud's Aladdin, Scott steals the show, her beautiful voice soaring in the film's classic numbers like A Whole New World, as the two lovers fly to freedom on the magic carpet.
While Massoud just scrapes by musically, his youthful enthusiasm, floppy hair and gleaming gnashers almost precisely mirror the character in Disney's 1992 cartoon, and he dances like a madman. The princess and Aladdin have great chemistry, although they often talk in 21st century psychobabble: 'It's a little sad having a monkey as the only parental authority in my life,' moans Aladdin, with the cute CGI-assisted Abu gibbering on his shoulder.
Will Smith gives a relaxed and funny performance as the genie
Scott's best moment comes with a belter of a song, Speechless, specially written by the original composer Alan Menken. 'I won't be silent, you can't keep me quiet,' Jasmine roars as she not only demands to choose her own suitor, but to rule over her people as Sultan. (Or more correctly, Sultana.) Expect Speechless to take on power ballad fame among small girls, rather like Frozen's Let It Go!
While the late Robin Williams was celebrated for voicing the genie in the cartoon like a manic American chat show host, Smith gives a more relaxed and funny performance.
We mostly see his giant muscled torso, with a tornado of blue smoke following behind as he emerges from the lamp. He advises Aladdin on passion and fashion, possibly channelling Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, as the urchin gears up to become Prince Ali.
The only disappointment is Jafar, the palace vizier intent on usurping the sultan and marrying Jasmine. Despite the villain's hissy fits, cobra wand and dark magic, even the toddlers at the family premiere seemed unperturbed.
Jafar is played by Marwan Kenzari, who is Dutch-Tunisian, while Massoud is Egyptian-Canadian, and Scott's father is English and her mother is of Gujarati Indian descent. Although not exactly clinging to Aladdin's Arabian roots, there can be no accusations of old-fashioned 'whitewashing' with fake-tanned actors, and the cast will have worldwide box-office appeal.
There's plenty of action too, with a parkour-style sequence as Aladdin escapes from guards in the streets of Agrabah, and a volcanic meltdown in the Cave of Wonders in the desert after he tries to escape with the lamp.
Directed by Guy Ritchie, Aladdin feels overly baggy compared to the slick cartoon. And what's with the Bollywood finale? Yet the updating of Jasmine's character is welcome, and clearly Scott — who played the Pink Power Ranger and appears later this year in Charlie's Angels — is one to watch.
KATE MUIR
Watch out: geeky girls are about!
Booksmart (15)
Verdict: Coming-of-age-comedy
Just when you thought you couldn't stand another American high school misfit comedy, with clichéd mean girls, jocks, locker banter, a p***ed-up pool party and a prom, along comes Booksmart to refresh the genre.
Actress Olivia Wilde has taken to the director's chair with aplomb, helming a hilarious, tender and quietly revolutionary movie starring Beanie Feldstein as Molly, and Kaitlyn Dever as Amy, two high-school seniors so swotty they have failed to party at all. Thus, on the last night before graduation, they have to cram a year's-worth of misbehaviour into one evening.
The 18-year-olds look, on the surface, like losers: Molly rolls into school in a vast mustard polo neck, checked jacket and buttoned-up skirt, riding in Amy's peeling blue Volvo. They are the epitome of uncool and damn happy about it: geekily feminist, they outsmart their classmates, and have university places awaiting at Yale and Columbia.
The hipster school principal, played by Jason Sudeikis, is clearly terrified of the girls' workaholic ways. Suffice to say, 'Malala' is their secret code word and Amy's bedroom door bears a sign 'A Room of One's Own', referencing Virginia Woolf.
So when the girls make a desperate attempt 'to experience a seminal fun anecdote' — and also get laid — it's like a high-IQ version of The Hangover. Stolen roadsters, projectile vomit, bathroom bonking, a pizza-driver heist, and a police raid all feature, as they must, as well as a passionate crush in every sense on a toy panda.
In a surreal scene, Molly and Amy are slipped a hallucinogenic drug at a party and believe they have turned into Barbies. The dolls rip their clothes off, discover their knees don't bend, realise their lady parts are now smooth orange plastic, and panic about how on earth they will ever pee.
Whatever happens, the girls are always aware of the irony of each moment, and when things go insanely wrong, their friendship is unrelenting. In particular, Feldstein has a powerful screen presence, as she did playing a best friend to Greta Gerwig in the similar Lady Bird, and she will be the lead in Caitlin Moran's upcoming How To Build A Girl. KM
The Secret Life Of Pets 2 (PG)
Verdict: Pawsitively awful
What do pets do in private when their owners are away? Act in badly-scripted, unfunny animated movies, to go by the latest outing in The Secret Life Of Pets series.
This irritating kids' adventure stars a terrier called Max, who suffers from neuroses after his owners have a baby.
As the toddler grows, so does Max's nervous scratching tic, resulting in the vet giving him a plastic 'collar of shame'. He's anxiously channelling Woody Allen, and not in a good way.
A visit to the countryside, where he meets a butch and world-weary farm dog voiced by Harrison Ford, results in Max finding his mojo. That would be perfectly fine, were it not for another messy parallel strand of the story featuring a team of furry friends rescuing a white tiger cub from a circus.
Despite (no doubt expensive) voice performances from Kevin Hart as Snowball the toy rabbit, Tiffany Haddish as Daisy the Shih Tzu, and Jenny Slate as Gidget the Pomeranian, the film is a mess. Although directed by Chris Reynaud and written by Brian Lynch of the Despicable Me and Minions franchise, it lacks the antic slapstick of their other work.
Worse still are the sickening Play Doh colours of the whole production. These improved when I put on my sunglasses (in the cinema), but if you're taking the kids, desperate for entertainment on a rainy day, earplugs might also be a plus. KM
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