The life and times of Sir Elton John in his most tumultuous decades unfurl as a vibrant, frenetic musical in Rocketman — a film that's admirably unafraid to engage with the star's homosexuality and grapple with his inner demons.
While it won't exactly redefine the artist whose music these days is synonymous with "MOR radio" and a certain Disney cartoon soundtrack, it will at least remind you that once upon a time Elton, like the best of them, did a gruelling rock apprenticeship in dingy pubs and went through his own personal hell of toxic relationships and even more toxic substances.
Using a stint in rehab in 1990 as the key plot device, it begins with Elton (Taron Egerton) striding in to an addicts' support meeting in a sequined red devil jumpsuit complete with horns, like he's just left a sweaty stage somewhere. He begins to talk about his life and the film dutifully follows, flashing back to the various episodes.
There's his solitary childhood in suburban 1950s London, where he's the piano prodigy Reginald Dwight (played by Matthew Illesley and later Kit Connor) — a boy unloved by his stern father Stanley (Steven Mackintosh), not loved enough by his mother Sheila (Bryce Dallas Howard) and adored by gran Ivy (Gemma Jones).
Then there's the friendship with his ever-patient and supportive lyricist Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell), the film's most well-drawn and tender relationship, and the torrid love affair with his emotionally cruel but astute manager John Reid (Richard Madden).
What becomes clear is that for much of Elton's meteoric rise — which eventually peaked when he accounted for 4 per cent of total worldwide record sales — his personal life was a mess, and Egerton's wired, neurotic performance conveys a clear sense of a man unhappy in his own skin, while invincible on stage.
As hackneyed as it sounds, when he's firing, he's a man at one with his piano, and the audience is at one with him.
Director Dexter Fletcher takes this idea literally in a rousing concert scene at LA's iconic Troubadour club at the beginning of Elton's US success, where he makes performer and audience suddenly float into the air mid-song (he over-eggs the idea a second time when he makes John literally take off like a rocket later in the film).
Fletcher is no stranger to the music film, having previously made Proclaimers jukebox Sunshine on Leith and famously signing on for the final two weeks of shooting on Bohemian Rhapsody after the studio fired Bryan Singer.
If that last film's main flaw was its sanitised rewriting of Freddie Mercury's story, rumoured to be the result of executive producer vetoes from the surviving members of Queen, then Rocketman certainly benefits from Fletcher having greater control.
Credit also must go to Elton John, who is executive producer on the film, and his husband David Furnish, who is one of the producers, for the film rising above branded family entertainment.
There's enough cocaine snorting and gay sex to push most "authorised biography" criticisms aside, but that said, it's no radical excoriation of the myths of stardom.
The script, written by Elton's friend and Billy Elliott writer Lee Hall, ends up like many coming-of-age stories: on the soft landing pad of self-acceptance and lessons learnt.
Additionally, the film is annoyingly simple at times — the cliché of a champagne cork popping in a record company office, for example, is a disappointing segue from the relatively nuanced scene of Elton at the piano, finding the chords to Your Song, as Bernie watches on.
Fletcher and his long-time cinematographer George Richmond achieve best results in the musical numbers, where John's songs send the film off into musical reveries far from scripted clichés.
One of the most impressive sequences is a rendition of Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting), which begins in a pub and transitions, via rain-slicked alleys, to the colour of an amusement park.
The narrative propels the film forward through the 50s and 60s, the camera whirls, and different groups of dancers representing the various ethnic and youth subcultures of the decades appear behind Elton, from Teddy Boys to Mods to Jamaican rude boys and Indian performers (these last two complete with ska and bhangra inflections).
Had the film had a more sophisticated script to match such formal ambition, it might have resulted in something extraordinary.
As it stands, Rocketman is a better-than-average biopic of a man whose real-life story spans so many decades and takes so many detours, it's impossible to contain in a 2-hour movie.
The ill-fated 1984 marriage to sound engineer Renate Blauel (Celinde Schoenmaker) for example — a misjudged leap into heteronormative domesticity that's transposed from sunny Sydney to England, and shoehorned into a disappointing vignette — barely has time to breathe.
Likewise, the advent of the AIDS crisis is despatched with one of the film's less successful scenes — a stylised and ominous leather-clad sequence oozing sex and cocaine paranoia that feels as dated as one of Elton's videos from the time.
What the film does do well is convey the anguish Elton suffered at the hands of various people close to him, and there are some staggeringly awful illustrations of his dysfunctional personal life.
Sheila's response to Elton's coming out is so cruel it's almost meme-worthy, and Stanley asking his son to sign an album for a work colleague is a masterclass in studied paternal indifference.
In all of this, Egerton's stocky, pale and skittish figure is compelling, and his performances of the back catalogue are emphatic and impassioned.
If only the film's unflinching gaze and sheer energy were enough to inspire a great film.
Elton should be applauded for allowing the film to be so up front about the bad behaviour of everyone on screen (including himself), but you suspect his two-decade-long attachment to the project ultimately hindered it from becoming the more substantial and curious portrait Dexter Fletcher might have made.
Rocketman is in cinemas from May 30.
