Rocketman reviews: Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic score REVEALED for Elton John movie

The Elton John film, starring Taron Egerton, was shown at Cannes last week and generated a strong reaction – including a standing ovation that left the actor in tears. Now, as its release date approaches, its scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic have been revealed. How has it fared, and how does it compare to its closest stable-mates like Bohemian Rhapsody?

At time of writing, Rocketman’s Rotten Tomatoes score is 88%.

The critics’ consensus reads: “It’s going to be a long, long time before a rock biopic manages to capture the highs and lows of an artist’s life like Rocketman.”

On Metacritic, its score is 69 – indicating “generally favourable reviews”.

Bohemian Rhapsody, for comparison, had 61% on Rotten Tomatoes and 49 on Metacritic.

Among Rocketman’s glowing critiques, The Times gave a hefty five stars.

“It finds strength in texture, beauty in sadness, and an inspired finale in a crackpot arrangement of one of the singer’s greatest hits,” they said.

Evening Standard also gave a perfect score, saying: “Taron Egerton, in a fantastic performance, doesn’t impersonate Elton John, he becomes him; he doesn’t lip-sync, he sings, making the songs matter in that moment in the story.”

And in a four-star review, Time Out wrote: “The songs explode from the screen, time jumps catapult the story forward with exhilarating élan and even the emotional stuff lands, for the most part.”

The Guardian, meanwhile, issued a three-star verdict, reasoning: “Rocketman is an honest, heartfelt tribute to Elton John’s music and his public image.”

There have been more reserved critics: in a piece that gave the film a C+ grade, AV Club said: “As inventive as the movie gets in teasing out both the melancholy and the joy of John and Taupin’s songs, Rocketman still genuflects toward the myth of biopic respectability.”

And in a lowly one-star review, Little White Lies commented: “Rocketman aspires to nothing more than colourful reportage of a life already well-known to the public, dissolving into an encyclopedia entry as the final title cards inform us that things turned out alright for this ‘Elton John’ fellow.”

Rocketman is out on Wednesday in the UK.