Taron Egerton as Elton John in Rocketman (photograph by David Appleby/Paramount)

Dwight eventually receives a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music, though this is touched upon only briefly. Apart from his studies, Dwight’s spends his lively days as a pub pianist, playing background keys for touring American soul and R&B artists. One of these musicians inspires Dwight to shed the baggage of his closeted upbringing and to accentuate his boisterous stage persona – ‘You got to kill the person you were born to be in order to become the person you want to be’. (Hence the sparkling ‘Elton John’ identity is born.) In one scene, John reads a handful of lyrics penned by Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell); inspired, he seeks him out. Taupin becomes John’s long-time songwriter and collaborator; their fraternal affection is a tender refrain throughout the film. As John struts into the 1970s, his animated performances beget success and riches, and Rocketman begins to unpack the rhinestone- and narcotic-studded period of his life.

The film has flashes of near brilliance, namely the rendering of John’s chart-topping hits into surreal musical numbers. In one sequence, ‘Honky Cat’ blares throughout a rollicking ride through haute-couture shopping sprees and Scarface-sized snorts of cocaine. These hallucinatory scenes feel authentic, given John’s legacy as a performer, and Egerton is flawless in capturing his ostentatious and camp musicality. For all the sequins in Hollywood, though, most of Rocketman’s numbers lack the technical precision and theatrical rigor needed to spellbind an audience. With the possible exception of Julian Day’s meticulous costumes, the film, striving for grandiose effects, comes across as a dishevelled Baz Luhrmann counterfeit.

Another key scene teases us with traces of magic realism. In John’s California mansion, sycophantic partiers swarm around him while he swigs vodka direct from the bottle. No one pays much attention until the host, high on prescription drugs, plunges into a swimming pool. The water is an inky abyss, as cinematographer George Richmond renders a dark oblivion at the bottom of the pool, a vision of a young Dwight sitting at a miniature piano, wearing a space suit permitting him to breathe and sing underwater. Dwight croons the titular ‘Rocket Man’ – ‘it’s lonely out in space’ – as a troupe of synchronised swimmers come to the rescue and John’s stomach is pumped.

These insights into John’s substance abuse, at the height of his fame, should be distressing, but reams of clumsy dialogue make Rocketman seem overwrought. There are repeated attempts to rationalise John’s behaviour as the symptom of a terse relationship with his father, with flashbacks to the young, dewy-eyed Dwight asking his father, point blank, ‘When are you going to hug me?’ The dialogue is exhausting. It’s also in these drug-addled scenes that Fletcher and screenwriter Lee Hall echo Bohemian Rhapsody. Again, the trope of a self-destructive superstar is overshadowed by sexual promiscuity. John’s various trysts are portrayed as vulgar and as problematic as his drug addiction. Rocketman becomes a moralistic tale denouncing non-monogamous queer relationships, cleverly shrouding itself in glitter and flamboyancy, like a cinematic celebration of pride. A tokenistic rainbow ribbon tied around John’s straw boater, in the final musical number, is as close as the film comes to lauding his queerness.

Taron Egerton as Elton John in Rocketman (photograph by David Appleby/Paramount)

One cringe-making footnote is a slideshow recognising John’s fundraising work for HIV/AIDS. There is a recent photo of John hugging the beneficiaries of his charitable work. The following one sees a middle-aged John grinning amid a pile of Gucci shopping bags. He quips that his only remaining addiction is shopping (John has never been famed for his tact). This unabashed ‘Where are they now?’ moment serves to remind audiences, moments before they shuffle out of the theatre, that Rocketman is little more than a self-congratulatory musical that scrambles to earn its sentimentality. Add to this John’s credit as an executive producer (and a producer credit for his husband, David Furnish), and the scent grows fishier. It’s worth noting that Rocketman is being released in the same year as John’s autobiography. He’s also in the middle of a three-year ‘farewell’ tour, performing three hundred shows over five continents – a victory lap of galactic proportions. It’s hard to escape the impression that Rocketman is just one more profitable cog in the wheels of the ‘Elton John machine’.

Rocketman is redeemed only by Egerton’s convincing performance as John and by his sheer vocal horsepower. The film’s surreal musical numbers may have been choreographed with gymnastic precision, but they lack a certain lavishness. We miss the censored story of John’s life as a joyously queer man. Overall, we’re left feeling like pawns in a wider marketing scheme. For two hubristic hours, Rocketman stalls, splutters, before mercifully falling apart.

Rocketman, 121 minutes, directed by Dexter Fletcher. In cinemas 30 May 2019.