Movie Review -- Bohemian Rhapsody

  So I finally got around to watching Bohemian Rhapsody and to my great disappointment it wasn't a two-hour music video for the song of the same name. Talk about false advertising! Instead it's a biopic about Queen and its lead singer Freddie Mercury. So can this movie spread its wings and breakthru or will it bite the dust? Let's check it out.

  So yeah, as stated above the film follows Mercury from his days as a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport all the way to his performance with Queen at 1985's Live Aid at Wembley Stadium. And yeah that's about all there is to say about the plot. It covers a few major events of the band's life up to 1985, detailing the origins of their most popular songs interspersed with Mercury's relationships and sexuality. It is, regrettably, a lot of surface-level stuff. I didn't know all that much about Queen before seeing this film and after seeing it I still don't feel as if I know all that much about them.

  Apparently there's also a lot of historical inaccuracies to Bohemian Rhapsody. For example, in real life Freddie Mercury didn't learn that he had HIV until after Live Aid, not before. Also Queen never broke up, which means that Live Aid wasn't really a reunion gig as the movie suggests. If you're like me and you're not overly familiar with Queen's history then these stone cold crazy glitches shouldn't bother you too much (I had to look these up). I can accept biopics often require little changes to real life stories in order to streamline events into movie script material. But if you're a big fan of Queen then you may be disappointed that the band's history was oversimplified to this degree. Plus Bohemian Rhapsody suffers from that old familiar problem of a lot of musical biographies: anyone who's familiar at all with the subject already knows how the story is going to end.

  In the director's chair we've got Brian Singer and his work here is kind of a mixed bag. One can't deny how well-shot, energetic, and fun the concert scenes are but on the other hand there are a bunch of scenes that overstay their welcome. For example the movie's climax is Queen's performance at Live Aid and this legendary 21-minute set is almost fully recreated (I think they only left out “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “We Will Rock You”). But as good as this scene is, I couldn't help but wonder is it over yet?

  As one might expect of a Queen movie the main character is Freddie Mercury, played by Rami Malek. Malek does a fantastic job with his somewhat weird performance and it definitely grows on you after a while, as Freddie becomes more comfortable with himself as the film goes on. The other characters are alright although I suspect that some of them fall prey to the aforementioned oversimplification, especially with regards to the film's antagonist.

  So that's Bohemian Rhapsody, an ordinary musical biopic that, while lacking in staying power, does manage to have some scenes of genuine fun. If you're already a hardcore Queen fan then you may end up going slightly mad at this one vision. For everyone else who's thinking about seeing it, don't stop now because it will rock you.

Grade: