My wife and I saw it last night and enjoyed it, more than expected for me.
It’s 2 parts biopic, 1 part musical. Fun, sad, interesting, and I learned a lot about Elton I didnt know. A good watch I’m recommending.
I saw this last night. It’s far more a musical IMO as it only covers up to 1990 or so, and since he was on drugs and alcohol during most of that period, it is unnecessarily a pretty bleak movie for the last half.
In fact, I’d say a lot of it is bleak. Except for the early parts showing him & Bernie Taupin collaborating.
It’s not saying that it’s a bad movie - great soundtrack and some pretty big changes to some songs. But they do tie songs to events in his life - which is a bit of a stretch according to some articles I read.
So as a musical it works. As a biopic I was left wanting with so many years missing - I was hoping we’d get to see how he met Diana and became knighted, but it must have been after 1990.
The only thing that really bugged me, and I’ll put it behind a spoiler because I don’t want people to go looking for it during the movie:
The way Taron Egerton just has his hands on the keyboard and not doing anything was too visible and too distracting. So many shots of his hands just resting on the keys pretending to play.
I watched this with my daughter today. We both liked it and agreed it was better (for us) than Bohemian Rhapsody which we also liked. It seemed more ‘honest’ as much as you can say that about a movie of this type.
I saw it last weekend and really enjoyed it for the spectacle and the music. I had read some stuff about why some scenes are filmed as they are and that probably helped understand the fantasy aspect of it for me where some might not get the symbolism at work.
It’s definitely a musical and I suspect it will make it to Broadway. It totally plays like one in almost every way.
Recommended.
Saw it tonight with my mom, who hated it. She much preferred Bohemian because it handled the main character’s sexuality in a much more discrete fashion. Too much time spent on drug abuse too. Reading this thread for the first time, Marxeil’s response about honesty is just about exactly my response I had to her, that it was portraying his life rather frankly and with his permission.