'Rocketman' rules over 'Godzilla' in entertainment value

The story beats in “Rocketman, the musical biopic about Elton John, rely heavily on the go-to conventions of the genre. Basically, a talented musician faces down cold-hearted parents, has a triumphant escalation of fame and then succumbs to severe drug use.

Those may be true bits of John’s story, but it’s also an overfamiliar tale. We’ve seen it before in many movies, good and bad.

“Rocketman” can’t avoid some of those cliches. However, the movie finds creative and exciting ways to celebrate John’s music and career perseverance.

For one, the movie is, refreshingly, a full-blown musical, with characters breaking out into song and dance at routine intervals within scenes. Recent “musicals” like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “A Star is Born” keep all the singing limited to stage and studio-recording scenes, whereas “Rocketman” can combine music and fantastical imagery into whatever scene best fits the narrative in the moment.

Almost all the musical numbers in “Rocketman” are dynamite thanks to lively direction, creative remixes of John’s classics and a showstopping performance by Taron Egerton (the “Kingsman” series), who does his own stellar singing in the role of Elton John.

Someone please explain how Rami Malek won an Oscar for NOT singing in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” No, I just need to let it go.

Egerton simply crushes the performance, not just with the songs but with how he manages to keep the performance soulful and relatable as the movie rolls through the typical “fall-from-grace” rock star beats.

Of course it helps to have the catalog of Elton John as an anchor. The director, Dexter Fletcher, also happens to be the uncredited director of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” after original helmer Bryan Singer was fired from the project for … numerous reasons. “Rhapsody,” while still one of the worst Best Picture nominees in recent memory, had its own set of energetic moments, so it’s nice to see Fletcher be more successful here while being in full control of the project.

Ultimately, again, it boils down to “Rocketman” embracing its fantastical elements and letting Egerton sing freely and often. It’s a blast to watch, start to familiar finish.

“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” embraces its movie roots as well, but mostly for diminishing returns. As a sequel to the 2014 American reboot of the long-running series, “King of the Monsters” aims to deliver more beasts, more destruction and more epic monster battles, especially compared to the 2014 movie that tried a more human, ground-level approach. While the new movie achieves the “more,” it fails to hinge the onscreen mayhem onto any sort of compelling or coherent storyline.

“King of the Monsters” boasts an overqualified cast, including Vera Farmiga, Kyle Chandler, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Bradley Whitford and “Godzilla” returnees Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins and David Strathairn. They’re all mostly wasted in limited, one-note roles, aside for Farmiga and Chandler, who have some of the more ridiculous character arcs in recent blockbuster memory (as well as the majority of the movie’s awful expository dialogue). Millie Bobby Brown (“Stranger Things”) plays the daughter of the divorced married couple/scientists played by Farmiga and Chandler, so she gets to be strapped into both lousy storylines.

Audiences don’t go to Godzilla movies for the human drama, obviously. It’s just that so much of “King of the Monsters” hinges on the whereabouts and choices of these characters without giving them any meaningful dramatic moments or even believable personalities. Godzilla, alongside his monster enemies and friends, doesn’t have the screentime to properly trample over these cardboard characters.

Director Michael Dougherty (“Krampus”) oversees a few incredible individual shots (most of which have appeared in the trailers). That said, much of the broader action sequences lack a connection to real-world environments, resulting in a lot of uninteresting CGI mayhem.

After about 90 minutes of lifeless action and brain-dead human conflict, “King of the Monsters” at least rallies for one big, fantastic final battle between Godzilla and the three-headed Ghidorah. Just try and ignore all the humans scrambling around Fenway Park for whatever terrible expository reason given.

Godzilla will reappear soon, facing off against King Kong next year in a shared sequel of “King of the Monsters” and last year’s mostly mediocre “Kong: Skull Island.” Hopefully these two giants of the monster movie genre can come together with at least a passable screenplay.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.