Rocketman Review: 8 Ups & 2 Downs

1. The Occasional Musical Biopic Cliches

Though Rocketman boasts a lot of bells and whistles - namely a stonking lead performance and Fletcher's impeccable style - at its core Lee Hall's script is actually fairly straight-forward and down-the-line.

This certainly give Egerton and co. room to wring every last drop of humanity from John's life story, but it does occasionally lend too much air to well-worn musical biopic cliches.

The film's main framing device, set within a rehab meeting, basically kick-starts a "tell us a story" back-and-forth between time periods which feels effortlessly conventional, and much of the rise-and-fall through-line will feel extremely familiar to those who've seen a music biopic or twelve.

Still, as shot and acted, Rocketman is largely vivacious enough that it manages to do something interesting with even its more stock elements, though trimming a few of them completely wouldn't have hurt.

With these few gripes in mind, however, here's everything the film knocks out of the park...