Taron Egerton is terrific as the singer, but the real star of this electric biopic is director Dexter Fletcher
“When are you going to hug me?” That question echoes around Dexter Fletcher’s dazzling rock opera – a fantastical account of the highs and lows of Elton John’s wild-ride rise, told in frenetically full-blooded musical form. It’s the story of a little boy who became a big star while plaintively pleading “I want lurrve, but it’s impossible”; a shy kid (an “introverted extrovert”) who must learn to play-act confidence after enduring a childhood that would have struck a chord with Philip Larkin. Yet unlike the problematically rejigged chronology of Bohemian Rhapsody (which Fletcher rescued from disaster), this proudly nonlinear treat puts its jukebox soundtrack on shuffle, wittily deploying tunes to fit the mood rather than the timeline. The result is a riotous fact-meets-fiction swirl that combines the Brit-pic grit of That’ll Be the Day with the colourful ambition of Absolute Beginners and the surreal excesses of Lisztomania, all tied together by a barnstorming central performance from Taron Egerton.
We open with Egerton’s Elton, preposterously attired in horned-demon garb, striding into rehab group therapy, where he declares himself to be an alcoholic, cocaine addict, sex addict, bulimic, shopaholic and more. From here, we flash back to key moments in Elton’s life, played out as extravagantly choreographed musical numbers – the Crocodile Rock of his blue-touch-paper appearances at the Troubadour in LA, where Elton appears to fly; the Honky Cat prowl of success with lover/manager John Reid (a slimy-sexy Richard Madden); the mournful cry of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, as lyricist Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) realises they’re not in Kansas any more.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2QqoimQ
