Mark Grote

What a depressing operetta of a film, flipping back and forth, from reality to fantasy back to reality again, in what is a musical of horrors. Like record albums produced by fading superstars who suddenly want to do artsy explorations into music, this film suffers from these drippingly sappy EJ song vinettes that pop in and out of the storyline where Taron Egerton (Elton John) and others suddenly break out into song in the middle of scenes that are not only negative and depressing, it's like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang meets The Exorcist. Half the time it's hard to know what's going on except the film's one constant...the theme of depression, drugs and anger. The best part of the film is early when Elton begins to emerge as a superstar. But the film quickly boars head long into cringy sex scenes and melancholy never to return to anything redeeming. Whatever started to go right in the beginning suddenly went wrong and stayed that way. Not even Elton's original recordings survived this film. If you expected to see a movie about his music career, shove off. There's almost more about counseling than performance scenes. For that reason, if you liked Queen, you'll hate this. Skip this downer. As far as biopics go, this one is by far the worst. One star for being a bad movie and one star for production quality. Nothing else worth rewarding.