'Elton John: Never Too Late' Reviews: "We experience the staggering magnitude of stardom Elton achieved"

         On November 15, 2024, with a streaming release on December 13, 2024, Disney+ releases 'Elton John: Never Too Late', which at the time of this writing has received predominantly positive reviews and a score of 71% on Rotten Tomatoes. In the documentary, the EGOT recipient "looks back on his life and the astonishing early days of his 50-year career in this emotionally charged, intimate and uplifting full-circle journey. As he prepares for his final concert in North America at Dodger Stadium, Elton takes us back in time to recount the extraordinary highs and heartbreaking lows of his early years and how he overcame adversity, abuse and addiction to become the icon he is today." Read the full review round-up below.

       Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com notes, "You can’t do a music icon as big as John in under two hours, and directors R.J. Cutler and David Furnish struggle to figure out what chapters to rush through and where to linger. The film works best when they do the latter, highlighting how modern John supports young artists—there’s a great conversation with The Linda Lindas, for example—or just showing his deep love for his family. I could have watched much more of this stuff and spent hours with the glimpses of process seen here, such as in a mesmerizing archival scene wherein a young John gets the lyrics for “Tiny Dancer” from Bernie Taupin and figures out the melody. Give me that kind of stuff for days." Adding, "Honestly, the biggest problem with “Never Too Late” is that there’s not enough of it. It speeds through major moments in John’s career and then settles lovingly in where he is today, but I think that would have been even stronger with more room to breathe. There’s something very moving about how much joy Elton John has brought to the world and how that giving has led him to such a happy, creative place where he can still be inspired by the art he has so confidently shaped."

       Owen Gleiberman of Variety says, "Going into “Elton John: Never Too Late,” I’ll confess that I had a bit of a prejudice. I felt as if I’d heard the Elton John story, or at least the part where he becomes a running-on-empty cokehead and alcoholic, and is the biggest star in the world but miserable, and lets this all drag on for too many years to count, and is finally rescued by sobriety and love…I felt like Elton has told this story so often that I never needed to hear it again. But “Never Too Late,” co-directed by R.J. Cutler (“The September Issue,” “Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry”) and David Furnish, who is Elton’s husband, sets what has become Elton’s living-fast-and-bottoming-out agony-of-fame mythology in the context of a highly detailed and archivally rich account of that period. So watching it, it means something again. We experience the staggering magnitude of stardom Elton achieved, the candy rapture of his music, right along with the anxiety and hollowness he was feeling, all of which comes across in hundreds of telling photographs and snippets of film footage, as well as extended excerpts from a taped interview that Elton did for a memoir decades ago. It all becomes fresh again."

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash

       Radheyan Simonpillai of Guardian was less impressed, stating, "The incredible access is expected since Never Too Late is produced by John’s husband and manager David Furnish, who co-directs alongside RJ Cutler. But perhaps that’s why it also feels so precious and tempered." Continuing, "Never Too Late perks up when the singer recalls his time with John Lennon. The hilarious and moving passage includes an animated recreation of the pair getting high off mountains of coke in a hotel room; and then hiding quietly as if no one was in when Andy Warhol comes knocking. It’s the kind of story we could have used more of.The relationship between the two icons would build up to their shared 1974 Thanksgiving concert performance in Madison Square, which, unbeknownst to anyone, would be Lennon’s last. Here’s the thing. The footage from the concert is so dark and grainy that it’s barely usable. But the film-makers, borrowing from Chris Marker’s visual style in La Jetée throughout Never Too Late, recreate the scene with a succession of still photos unfolding over the concert audio, as though emulating the motion and the emotions in the moment."