Best Music Biopics & Musicals on KLM Flights (April 2026): Critic-Ranked

Best Music Biopics & Musicals on KLM Flights — April 2026

Before ranking these films, a necessary caveat: music biopics are the genre where critic scores matter least.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) sits at 55% on the combined critic scale — the lowest score in this list — and is one of the most-watched films in the history of IFE systems globally. Walk the Line (2005) sits at 77% and has been seen by more people than most 95%-rated films will ever reach. The critic-audience split in this genre is wider than in almost any other, and for a reason: biopics of beloved musicians activate something in audiences that formal critical analysis doesn't capture.

This article ranks by combined critic score because that's how inflight.guide evaluates films consistently. But the ranking comes with an honest acknowledgment: for this genre specifically, you should weight your own relationship with the artist equally with the score.

April 2026 brings 10 music films to the KLM catalog in a single month. That's unusual — most months have two or three. The full cluster covers six decades of popular music and four continents of artistic origin.

→ Browse the full KLM April 2026 music catalog — inflight.guide

The Musicals vs The Biopics

The ten films divide into two clear categories:

The Musicals — original stage productions adapted for film, with original or adapted musical numbers:

The Biopics — dramatised accounts of real musicians' lives:

And one that bridges both categories:

The Musicals

1. Hairspray (2007) — 86%

Genre: Musical / Comedy | Runtime: 1h 57m | RT Score: 91% | Metacritic: 81/100

The highest-scored film in the music cluster. Adam Shankman's adaptation of John Waters's 1988 film (which became a Broadway musical, which became this film) follows Tracy Turnblad — an overweight teenager in 1962 Baltimore who becomes a local TV dance celebrity while campaigning for racial integration of the show. John Travolta as Tracy's mother Edna, in prosthetic fat suit, is one of cinema's more technically committed comedic performances. Queen Latifah, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Zac Efron. The film is joyful without being vapid and politically direct without being preachy. At 117 minutes, it's the right length for the IFE's mid-flight entertainment window. Highest critic score in the April music cluster.

2. In the Heights (2021) — 85.5%

Genre: Musical / Drama | Runtime: 2h 23m | RT Score: 94% | Metacritic: 77/100

Jon M. Chu's adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical — set in Washington Heights, New York City, over a sweltering summer weekend — received exceptional critical reception (94% RT) and disappointing theatrical box office simultaneously. The songs are Miranda's pre-Hamilton work: energetic, rhythmically inventive, and structured to carry dramatic weight. The film opened in US theatres the same week as simultaneously streaming, which depressed ticket sales; the critical response remains the more accurate measure. At 2h 23m, it's substantial, but the energy rarely lets up. For passengers unfamiliar with Miranda's work and wanting to understand what Hamilton's cultural impact was built on, this is the more accessible starting point.

3. Wicked (2024) — 82%

Genre: Musical / Fantasy | Runtime: 2h 40m | RT Score: 89% | Metacritic: 75/100

Jon M. Chu again — and this time with the adaptation of Wicked, the most commercially successful Broadway musical of the 21st century. Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West, before she was wicked) and Ariana Grande as Glinda are both excellent. The production design is extraordinary. The first act is the best screen musical in years. The 89% RT reflects genuine critical enthusiasm; the 75 Metacritic reflects reservations about its length (2h 40m for Part One) and the sense that the film is reaching for mythic scale it hasn't fully earned by the end of its first instalment.

Wicked: For Good — Part Two — is also confirmed in the April catalog, making this the first month KLM passengers can watch the complete story. Combined runtime for both parts: approximately 5 hours. Plan accordingly.

The Biopics

4. Crazy Heart (2009) — 83%

Genre: Drama / Music | Runtime: 1h 52m | RT Score: 91% | Metacritic: 75/100

The most formally accomplished biopic in the April catalog — and the least well-known. Scott Cooper's film follows Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges, Oscar winner), a self-destructive country singer-songwriter on a small-venues tour, falling for a journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal, also Oscar-nominated). Bridges's performance is not a conventional biopic turn — it's a character study of addiction, artistic decline, and the specific pride of someone who was once excellent and can't quite believe it's gone. The film is drawn from real figures in country music history without being the story of any specific person. At 112 minutes, it's the most restrained and precise film in the cluster. If you know nothing else about it, know this: Jeff Bridges singing is not an approximation of a musician — it's the real thing.

5. Better Man (2024) — 81%

Genre: Musical Biography | Runtime: 2h 14m | RT Score: 88% | Metacritic: 74/100

Michael Gracey's Robbie Williams biopic made the unusual decision to portray Williams throughout as a CGI chimpanzee — and it works better than it should. The visual choice externalises Williams's own stated self-image (he has spoken publicly about feeling subhuman in fame's context), gives the film a tonal register that separates it from every other biopic in the cluster, and is oddly moving by the final act. Williams himself is not in the film — he provides the voice, and a Williams-sound-alike covers the musical performances. 88% RT reflects critics who found the formal choice genuinely interesting rather than gimmicky. The highest new biopic score in the April catalog.

6. Blinded by the Light (2019) — 78.5%

Genre: Drama / Music | Runtime: 1h 57m | RT Score: 87% | Metacritic: 70/100

Gurinder Chadha's film follows Javed, a British-Pakistani teenager in 1987 Luton whose discovery of Bruce Springsteen's music becomes the lens through which he processes his family's immigration experience, his father's conservatism, and his own ambitions as a writer. It's not a Springsteen biopic — it's a film about what Springsteen's music does to a specific person in a specific context, which is a more interesting premise. Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) makes crowd-pleasing films with genuine emotional specificity; this is the most politically serious work she's produced. The Springsteen songs used throughout are licensed, performed on the soundtrack, and contextualised by the characters' reactions.

7. A Complete Unknown (2024) — 79%

Genre: Biography / Drama | Runtime: 2h 20m | RT Score: 86% | Metacritic: 72/100

James Mangold's film about Bob Dylan's first four years in New York — 1961 to 1965, from his arrival as an unknown folk singer to his electric set at Newport that divided the folk world — is the most culturally ambitious biopic in the April catalog. Timothée Chalamet as Dylan received nearly universal critical praise for a performance that avoids impersonation in favour of something more interior. The film earned multiple Academy Award nominations. The 79% combined score reflects critics who appreciated the performance while finding the film too deferential to its subject — a classic biopic tension. For passengers who know Dylan's work: the film is most interesting as a document of that specific moment (the folk revival, the civil rights movement, the emergence of a counter-cultural voice) rather than as psychological biography. For those who don't: it's a strong period film with an exceptional central performance.

8. Walk the Line (2005) — 77%

Genre: Biography / Drama | Runtime: 2h 16m | RT Score: 82% | Metacritic: 72/100

James Mangold again — this time with Johnny Cash. Walk the Line is the film that set the template for the modern music biopic: childhood trauma, rise to fame, substance abuse, redemptive love story (here, the long relationship between Cash and June Carter, played by Reese Witherspoon, who won the Oscar). Joaquin Phoenix as Cash gives the same committed physical performance he brought to Joker — he trained for two years and performed all the vocals live, as did Witherspoon. The film is a very good version of a formula that has calcified in the decade since. For passengers who've seen it before, it holds better than most films of its type on a rewatch. For those who haven't: this is the Johnny Cash film.

9. Elvis (2022) — 72.5%

Genre: Biography / Drama | Runtime: 2h 39m | RT Score: 78% | Metacritic: 67/100

Baz Luhrmann's film about Elvis Presley is visually overwhelming in the specific way that Luhrmann is always overwhelming: every frame saturated, every edit competing with the one before it, the timeline non-linear in ways that sometimes obscure and occasionally illuminate. Austin Butler's performance is the film's strongest argument — he captures both the physical transformation of Presley across four decades and something of the specific cultural crisis that Elvis represented (a white performer building his career on Black American musical traditions). Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker provides the framing device and divides critics most sharply. At 2h 39m, it's the longest film in the cluster.

10. Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) — 55%

Genre: Biography / Drama | Runtime: 2h 14m | RT Score: 61% | Metacritic: 49/100

The clearest critic-audience split in the April catalog. Bohemian Rhapsody has been one of the most commercially successful music biopics ever made and one of the worst-reviewed. Critics found it sanitised (particularly in its treatment of Freddie Mercury's sexuality), narratively incoherent, and formally clumsy. Audiences found it an emotionally satisfying celebration of Freddie Mercury and Queen that crested at the Live Aid recreation sequence. Both responses are accurate — the film is genuinely flawed by the standards critics apply, and it is genuinely moving for the reasons audiences cite.

If you love Queen, the 55% combined score is probably not the number you're looking at. If you've never seen it and are deciding whether to watch: it's a crowd-pleaser with a poorly structured screenplay and Rami Malek's committed central performance. It earns its place on this list because more passengers will want to watch it than want to watch A Complete Unknown.

Back to Black (2024) — 62.5% (not in top 10 ranking)

Genre: Biography / Drama | Runtime: 2h 2m | RT Score: 67% | Metacritic: 58/100

Sam Taylor-Johnson's Amy Winehouse biopic is confirmed in the April catalog. It doesn't reach the top 10 by combined score — 62.5% — but Amy Winehouse's music and story are significant enough that this article would be incomplete without it. Marisa Abela's performance as Winehouse has divided critics: some praised her musical commitment, others found the impersonation unconvincing. The film is criticised for its selective account of Winehouse's life and for the way it frames her addiction. For passengers who want to understand the context of Winehouse's music and life, the documentary Amy (2015, Asif Kapadia) — not in the April catalog — remains the more accurate and artistically precise account. Back to Black is the alternative available this month.

Music Biopic & Musical Rankings — April 2026

Rank Title Year Artist/Subject Runtime RT Metacritic Combined
1 Hairspray 2007 Original Musical 1h 57m 91% 81 86%
2 In the Heights 2021 Original Musical 2h 23m 94% 77 85.5%
3 Crazy Heart 2009 (Fictional) Country 1h 52m 91% 75 83%
4 Wicked 2024 Original Musical 2h 40m 89% 75 82%
5 Better Man 2024 Robbie Williams 2h 14m 88% 74 81%
6 Blinded by the Light 2019 Springsteen music 1h 57m 87% 70 78.5%
7 A Complete Unknown 2024 Bob Dylan 2h 20m 86% 72 79%
8 Walk the Line 2005 Johnny Cash 2h 16m 82% 72 77%
9 Elvis 2022 Elvis Presley 2h 39m 78% 67 72.5%
10 Bohemian Rhapsody 2018 Freddie Mercury / Queen 2h 14m 61% 49 55%
— Back to Black 2024 Amy Winehouse 2h 2m 67% 58 62.5%

Scores reflect combined Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and Metacritic average. Back to Black included outside top 10 for completeness.

→ Filter all KLM April films by music genre on inflight.guide

The Critic-Audience Split: A Note

The music biopic genre produces the widest gap between critical reception and audience response of any mainstream film category. The reason isn't hard to find: critics evaluate these films as films — narrative coherence, formal innovation, historical accuracy. Audiences evaluate them as experiences of the artist's music and life. Those are different questions with legitimately different answers.

Bohemian Rhapsody (55% combined) is the most extreme case in this list, but it's not the only one. Walk the Line (77%) consistently rates higher with general audiences than with critics. Crazy Heart (83%) is the reverse — critics admire it more than casual audiences seek it out. Use the scores here as a starting point, not a verdict.

Also Try...

For passengers who want more music context:

Frequently Asked Questions

Which music biopic is the most historically accurate? Of the films in the April catalog, Walk the Line (Johnny Cash) and A Complete Unknown (Bob Dylan) are generally considered the most carefully researched — though both take dramatic liberties. A Complete Unknown in particular worked closely with people who knew Dylan in the 1961–1965 period, and Mangold has spoken publicly about what was invention vs. documented fact. Crazy Heart is fictional and doesn't claim otherwise. Bohemian Rhapsody is widely considered the least accurate — it compresses and invents timelines in ways that the surviving Queen members themselves have noted. If historical accuracy matters most to you, the documentary format (Amy, 2015; Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, 2024) is the more reliable approach.

Does KLM have both parts of Wicked in April 2026? Yes — both Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025, Part Two) are confirmed in KLM's April 2026 IFE catalog. This is the first month both parts are available on KLM simultaneously. Combined runtime is approximately 5 hours. Wicked: For Good concludes the story that Part One sets up; if you haven't seen Part One, watch Wicked first.

Is Back to Black (Amy Winehouse) in the April catalog? Yes — Back to Black (2024) is confirmed in KLM's April 2026 catalog. It sits outside the top 10 by combined critic score at 62.5% (67% RT, 58 Metacritic). The film covers Winehouse's rise to fame and her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil. Critics were divided on Marisa Abela's performance; the film is the only Winehouse-focused film in the catalog this month. The documentary Amy (2015, dir. Asif Kapadia) — widely considered the more complete account — is not confirmed in the April catalog.

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