Elton John has recently revealed that his eyesight has deteriorated to the point where he was unable to watch his new Devil Wears Prada musical. But it’s not something you would know in Disney+’s new documentary, Never Too Late. Filmed in 2022, it already feels out of date.
Made by RJ Cutler (who also made a film about Billie Eilish for the streamer in 2021) and John’s husband, David Furnish, the film follows the singer as he criss-crosses the United States on a farewell tour. The journey brought back memories of his early years in America, when this shy kid from Pinner achieved mega success – only to lose part of his soul in the process.
Never Too Late relies too heavily on old war stories about Elton’s cocaine blizzard years in the 1970s. Anyone with half an interest in the singer is surely already familiar with this period, which was also adequately covered in the 2019 biopic Rocketman. Do we really need to go there again?
Rather than force John to talk about the cocaine and loneliness all over again, Cutler has excavated audio interviews by journalist Alexis Petridis when he was ghost-writing John’s 2019 biography Me.
These recordings were not intended for broadcast, and the audio quality is less than pristine: John and Petridis generally sound as if they are trapped down a well. But the star is chatty throughout, delving in to his unhappy childhood with emotionally withholding parents, his early partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin and that career-making 1970 residency at the LA Troubadour, where he arrived an unknown and left a star.
He also revisits his relationship with manager John Reid (played by Richard Madden in Rocketman), his first love but also a physically abusive gaslighter who left John a mess for years. By the mid-70s, he was a hollowed-out shell. Heartbroken and adrift, he tried to overdose on pills days before his landmark Dodger Stadium concert in 1975. “My career was killing me,” he says. “All I lived for was my chart position, sex and cocaine.” You have to appreciate his candour.
At one point, Never Too Late also goes off on a fascinating tangent when he recalls his friendship with John Lennon, whose last-ever live performance was a guest spot with John at Madison Square Garden in 1974. But the tale is told in a highly formulaic fashion. The blend of off-camera voiceover and archive footage gives the film the feel of those cookie-cutter music documentaries that have been the staple of the BBC Four Friday night schedule for decades.
I suspect Disney+‘s interest in John has less to do with a genuine passion for classic albums like Captain Fantastic and the Dirt Brown Cowboy and more to do with his value as a brand. Recently, the streamer has bet big on heritage rock. In 2024 alone, it has released documentaries about The Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen and The Beatles. Elton John is another just another entry on the Disney spreadsheet.
All the above have been bland, sanitised affairs made with the official approval of their subjects. The same is broadly true of Never Too Late – though you have to credit John for being willing to speak about the dark side of fame, a subject entirely glossed over by those recent Springsteen and Beatles docs.
The documentary ends with Elton rocking Dodger stadium in 2022. Yet even here, it’s hard not to avoid déjà vu, given that the performance has been available in full on Disney + for the past two years.
Elton John is one of the greats of his generation, and his story is a gripping blend of triumph and tragedy. But it’s been told many times already, and this slick, unmemorable documentary has nothing new to say.
‘Elton John: Never Too Late’ is streaming on Disney+
