Cakes Takes Rocketman Movie Review

So I watched this gem a little while back and I couldn’t wait honestly. I love Taron Egerton! I’ve seen him in enough variety of the roles he takes now to know that he is definitely on his way as an actor. So I was excited to watch this movie at some point after it came out. Plus, who doesn’t love a good musical biopic about somebody awesome?

Taron Egerton tends to surprise me with the roles he takes, as this is the second biopic I’ve seen him in. To me, no matter what person he is acting as, when I go home and do my research on the person afterwards, I do notice that he always embodies their mannerisms and physicality well. He definitely does his homework and studies the person to get it down. I didn’t know he could sing as well as he can and while he doesn’t sound exactly like Elton, he did have a voice that I didn’t mind listening to impersonate Elton John.

The movie itself has an easy plot to go through. Just tell us about Elton John’s life over time. It is a biopic after all, right? But it is the way in which they choose to tell the story that blows it for me. I won’t say I have anything against musicals, but I will say that they come across as far more lighthearted to me, and this is what that was mostly. It came across a lot more like an actual musical than I wanted it to.

The movie had to obviously deal with the great catalogue of music that Elton John has, but it seemed to me like the music took far more of a stand than the story did. The story being told mostly through the eyes of therapy and flashbacks but none of it connected together like it should’ve. It was just a lot of unnecessary made for movie musical songs, stage performances and a few “this is how we made that song” moments. Nothing flowed to me.

Even through the more serious moments of the film where I was supposed to feel bad for the main characters, I didn’t or couldn’t, because it would be trumped by a feeling of the cringiness of random singing. Usually those sorts of feelings are only brought up when I’m watching new 90min Disney movies with 45mins worth of breakouts in song and dance. I’m being a little exaggerative but my point being, they focused so much on everybody singing and dancing in this movie so much that it gave nobody anything to do really acting wise and gave no emotions to these characters. Just all singing.

People don’t often just break out into song and dance together to convey emotions like sadness or anger, it just took me out of whatever tension or moment the movie was trying to build most times. A lot of the characters I wish I knew more about, including the main character, Elton. I was left wanting a bit more story than I got and that is the only thing that pulls me out of some of these newer musical biopics. They tend to follow the same formula of everything focusing on the music or getting to the next song in the film rather than the actual person and their life. It’s nice when it’s weaves correctly but it can be sloppily done if not.

I’d say this movie is definitely worth a watch though. Nothing too bad to say about it beside that it was a bit too musical for my taste but if you are a fan of Elton John or Taron Egerton, this may be a good film for you to check out. Taron does good with what he has in a film and isn’t a bad singer either. He’s worth the watch alone. If you don’t like musicals, then it might be a bit much for you and you won’t be able to stomach it.