Rami Malek does a great Freddie Mercury, but...

Rating: 6/10 (3 November 2018)

"Bohemian Rhapsody" (2018 release; 135 min.) is a bio-pic of the British band Queen, an in particular focuses on the lead singer Freddie Mercury (RIP). As the movie opens, we see Freddie waking up and getting ready to perform on Live Aid. We then go back to "London, 1970". Freddie has another argument with his parents, and heads out to catch a show. Ut happens to be Smile, with Brian on guitar and Roger on drums. That very night, Smile's led singer quits, and Freddie, who gives an impromptu audition, manages to convince Brian and Roger to take him in. It's not long before John joins as well, and Freddie renames the band Queen. In a parallel story, Freddie falls for a sweet girl named Mary... At this point we're a good 10 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.
Couple of comments: this movie has been in development for years and years. It ultimately was directed by Bryan Singer, best known for his with with in the X-men franchise. Here he brings 15 years in the band Queen to the big screen. Please note he was fired as director before completion of the film. Whoever made the decision to cast Rami Malek in the role of Freddie Mercury should take a big bow, as Malek is absolutely fantastic, as if Freddie Mercury has come alive again. Of course the music is top-notch. That said, there are a number of issues that bother me. First and foremost, for reasons that care incomprehensible (actually: so as to make the movie as commercially accessible as possible), this is a PG-13 movie, and hence we get a strongly filtered version of the band and of Freddie Mercury. Freddie's battle with AIDS is barerly touched upon, for one. Next, there are a number of unexplained gaffes in the movie: the movie makes it look like Queen hadn't played together in forever before doing LiveAid. That is simply untrue (the band did a long tour of Australia and Japan just months before LiveAid.) Then we see the band perform "Fat Bottomed Girls" on their first US tour (in 1974). Except that "Fat Bottomed Girls" was a hit single from Queen's 1978 album "Jazz", and was never played before 1978. Need I go on? As a life-long Queen fan who saw them in concert in 1978 and 1980 (arguably at the band's peak) in Belgium (where I grew up), "Bohemian Rhapsody" leaves me unfulfilled, I'm sorry to say. It should've been the definitive film about Freddie and the rest of Queen, but for me it's not. Thankfully Rami Malek's performance makes up for some of it.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" opened wide this weekend. The Saturday matinee screening where I saw this at here in Cincinnati was attended very nicely. If you have any interest in the music of Queen and/or the person that was Freddie Mercury, I encourage you to check it out, be it in theaters, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.