The makers of “Elton John: Never Too Late” wisely didn’t try to be completists. After a half-century-plus of touring as well as recording approximately eleventy thousand albums and musicals, attempting a complete survey of Elton John’s output in one film is a fool’s errand. However, the film ends up covering enough of his career that the resulting gaps are more noticeable than they should be. Viewers will leave the movie with a good-enough appreciation of his work, but not necessarily any deeper an understanding of the man than could be gleaned from viewing “Rocketman.”
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The documentary is ostensibly bracketed by a pair of massive concerts at Dodger Stadium. One was an unprecedented two-nighter by the era’s biggest rock star in front of 110,000 people in 1975. The other was in 2022 as part of his final tour, “Farewell Yellow Brick Road.” In between those tentpoles, the film interweaves parallel storylines, one inevitably more interesting than the other.
In the first, we get a fast-paced and gripping pocket bio of John as the young artist bursting out of his repressed English childhood. This rockets from his early career as the classically trained but rock-obsessed pianist who was backing bands like The Drifters in the 1960s to the insanely productive and fame-generating five years leading up to the first Dodger Stadium show. Charming snippets from John’s interviews with biographer Alexis Petridis provide witty and, at times, wistful narration.
People might understandably remember the 1975 concert primarily for the Bob Mackie-designed Dodgers uniform John wore. While that outfit’s sequined explosion of sparkle is understandably iconic—it says everything one needs to know about the era’s full-bore maximalist frenzy—its place in the cultural pantheon has unfortunately somewhat overshadowed the concert itself. What little we see of it here, primarily a rip-snorting cover of “Pinball Wizard,” is electrifying and certainly deserves its own full film treatment. Some other bits of rarely (and sometimes never) seen concert footage show John at the top of his game, fusing Little Richard and Winifred Atwell’s no-holds-barred piano playing with arena rock pomp and strut. In one of the film’s most poignant moments, we see John happily getting upstaged by John Lennon, who performs with him in front of a thunderously joyous Madison Square Garden crowd in 1974, Lennon’s first time on an American stage in eight years, and his last.
The second storyline tracks John from city to city on the 2022 tour. Unsurprisingly, there is less to marvel at here, except for the parade of exuberantly gaudy outfits (the glasses alone deserve a dedicated gallery display). Trying to avoid what he calls the “bubble,” the isolated caves of sycophancy and drugs that swallowed stars like Elvis Presley whole (and nearly captured him during the cocaine-fueled 1970s and ‘80s), John presents as more actively curious than one might imagine. We see him bringing acts like The Linda Lindas onto his podcast as a way of giving them exposure since, in his words, all modern-day radio stations play is” pap.”
The spirit of the film is largely that of well-earned sentimentality. John’s recollections of dark stretches in his life (emotionally and physically abusive childhood, one quite violent adult relationship, feelings of empty worthlessness) make clear the drive behind his current desire to be a boring old dad raising two fussed-over little boys.
But like many documentaries about late-career artists casting an eye back over the arc of their creative lives, “Elton John: Never Too Late” has the feel of a carefully packaged piece of promotional media. This is hardly unexpected since John’s husband, David Furnish, is credited as co-director alongside R.J. Cutler (“Belushi”). You can imagine what kind of kaleidoscopic fantasia might have resulted if John had given a filmmaker freedom to roam across his archives as Brett Morgen did with David Bowie for the disappointing yet wildly ambitious “Moonage Daydream.”
In comparison, “Elton John: Never Too Late” comes across as a safe and well-tooled piece of a carefully managed relationship with Disney, which streamed the 2022 Dodger Stadium show live. But unlike what a streaming service like Apple TV has done with certain iconic rock acts (Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back,” Todd Haynes’ “The Velvet Underground”), the end result here is more dutiful than thrilling or revealing. [C+]
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