Rocketman (5 Stars)

I watched "Rocketman" two months ago, but I returned to the cinema today because a sing-along version was being shown. The cinema was virtually empty, only about a dozen people. I guess the film is yesterday's news, and today everyone was watching Tarantino or "Blinded by the Light". That's a shame. As I've often said, a good film is a good film, even if you watch it months, years or even decades after it was first released. And good films are always watched best on a big screen.

Instead of text on the screen with a bouncing ball, the usual standard for sing-along films, the text was in blue sequins, like in the poster above, and each word turned golden as it was sung. Approximately. It's good that I already knew the songs, or I would have been off-beat if I'd followed the changing colour slavishly.

Surprisingly, I was the only person in the audience singing. Didn't the others want the sing-along experience? A woman sitting in the row in front of me repeatedly turned round and looked at me critically. Did she she think I was singing too loud? I half expected her to come up to me after the film.

The sing-along text was missing from one song, "Pinball Wizard". I have a theory. All the other songs in the film were written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, but this one song was written by Pete Townsend. Maybe he refused to give the studio the rights to print his text on screen. That's strange, because the song was allowed to be sung in the film, but in the world of copyrights strange things happen.

For some reason the title song uses a wrong word in the film. In the original song a line is

"I miss the Earth so much, I miss my wife".

In the film Taron Egerton sings "I miss my life". Naturally I sang the correct lyrics, whatever was on the screen. It's possible that the text was changed to emphasise that Elton John was gay. That's silly. It's just a song, it wasn't meant as a statement of sexual preference.

It's a sad film. Elton John was never loved by his father. His mother claimed that his father just wasn't capable of showing his feelings, but later in the film we see that he could show his feelings to his other children, just not to Elton. Even Elton's mother didn't love Elton as much as she loved the money she could get from him. That's tragic, but maybe the pain is what formed him. Would Elton John have been as productive if he'd had a happy childhood? We'll never know.

Bernie Taupin was his one true friend. Elton had lovers, and he's happily married today, but Bernie is the one who's stuck with him every since his early years as a performer. This friendship is touching, and it's definitely something that has formed him and his character.