Taron Egerton rocks in glossy, glittering Elton John biopic 'Rocketman'

“Rocketman” - ★ ★ ½

Whatever you say about Dexter Fletcher's glossy, glittering, blinged-out Elton John biopic “Rocketman,” a shiny sequin of a movie, it doesn't lack for sparkle. Like its flamboyant subject, it's a movie outfitted to the nines in dazzle and verve, even if it's gotten all dressed up with nowhere to go but the most conventional places.

Almost slavishly sealed within the hermetic bubble of the rock biopic, “Rocketman” will, justifiably, draw plenty of comparisons to its opening act: last year's Freddie Mercury tale “Bohemian Rhapsody.” They're both about larger-than-life figures, each gay icons, with a preternatural talent for hooks and spectacle. Fletcher also helped steer “Bohemian Rhapsody,” subbing for the departed Bryan Singer. The two movies even share a villain in music manager John Reid (Aiden Gillen in “Bohemian,” Richard Madden here).

And Elton, like Freddie, churned out unassailable, everlasting earworms sung round the world. Favoring melody over meaning, the music of both comes big-screen ready.

“Rocketman” deviates in its rating (R), its less hesitant depiction of its star's homosexuality and, most dramatically, in casting John's life across a fantastical musical tapestry. It's also quite definitely a better movie — although one still stuffed to gills with clichés and heavily dependent on the sheer toe-tap-ability of its star's extensive back catalog, and its lead performer.

Here, that's Taron Egerton, who doesn't especially look like John or sound like John, but he gives a star-making performance built on charisma and will. Egerton gives it his all, and if there's one quality that's most essential in an Elton John movie, it's probably spiritedness.

On the whole, this is a more-or-less true, authorized account (John is an executive producer), but one that frequently breaks free of stubborn things like chronology and gravity. In one scene, John himself rockets from an arena stage into the night sky and explodes as a firework.

Working from a script by Lee Hall, Fletcher zooms through John's life, finding trap doors in his past that fall into lavish song-and-dance routines. There's some “Rocket Man” on a toy piano as a toddler and a “Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting” at a carnival, for a reason that eluded me. The next song is rarely more than a few minutes away. Frequently, “Rocketman” feels like an ad for a jukebox Broadway musical. This is a movie yearning for the stage.

The film works in flashbacks, jumping off from an addiction group meeting. “My name is Elton Hercules John,” he introduces himself before giving a laundry list of addictions: alcohol, cocaine, shopping. The story shifts back, naturally, to John's childhood (Elton was then Reginald Dwight), where his withholding parents, and one of the snottier fathers you've seen, unwittingly mold their son into a desperate performer and a bit of a clothes horse.

The expected moments of breakthrough and excess follow in John's meteoric rise. The main thread throughout, at least theoretically, is his undying friendship with lyricist Bernie Taupin, a relationship that outlasts all others. There's not as much of Jamie Bell's Bernie as there should be, but if anyone takes up the slack, it's Madden, who sexily menaces the screen.

All of John's stage theatrics and feathered costumes, “Rocketman” suggests, are a way for John to hide from himself, from “Reginald Dwight.” But any demons that John might be haunted by are given only lip service. Maybe Elton couldn't cope with reality, but “Rocketman” certainly can't. Instead, Fletcher's movie is primarily one of metamorphosis, almost mythically drawn. Performing “Crocodile Rock” at Los Angeles' Troubadour, his feet — and the audiences' — achieve liftoff. “Rocketman” is happiest with its feet far off the ground in some dreamy, hollow, happy pop splendor.

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Starring: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard

Directed by: Dexter Fletcher

Other: A Paramount Pictures release. Rated R for language, drug use and sexual situations. 121 minutes