An enjoyable watch, but at what price the truth?

Rating: Null/10 (22 January 2019)

This is my first review for IMDB, which is a website I use a lot, but I've never bothered to create an account as I don't bother much with writing reviews and such, however as I watched Bohemian Rhapsody two days ago now, and I've found myself in a bad mood since then, I felt the need to register and voice my opinion, so here goes with my tuppence worth:
Firstly, purely as a movie I enjoyed this film - Rami Malek made a first class Freddie, he got the master's mannerisms down to a tee, really a superb performance. The guy who played Bryan May I thought was good, too, as is a lot of the movie - it's a good watch, if it was just a fictionalised movie - but it's not, it's as close to an official movie biography as ever there will be, not only endorsed by, but produced by Bryan May and Roger Taylor - two of the still living three members of the band who - out of everyone else on the whole planet - are clearly best placed to tell this tale. That's where this movie fails, and it fails miserably.
So much of this movie is fictionalised - SO much of it - that any viewer who is actually interested in the true story of a man who was indisputably one of greatest musicians of the 20th. century has to take what they see in this film with a pinch of salt. Now, I understand that in terms of making a film - the time constraints of fitting someone's life story into a couple of hours of celluloid creates limitations, important points have to be skipped, other points maybe have to be condensed or re-arranged in a manner which still allows for an emotional experience for the audience - sure, I understand that, but what I absolutely fail to understand with this movie is why the truth of certain aspects of the man's life - aspects which meant a lot to and had an effect on many, many other people's lives have been so blatantly re-arranged in this movie.
What do I mean? Well, rather than getting OCD and writing a ten page essay on this (this movie really did annoy me), perhaps if I could just illustrate two major examples here: In the movie it shows Freddie as being somewhat disillusioned with his life in the band, saying to the other members he wants a break from his band life before he relocates to Munich to record a solo LP which doesn't work out for him in the way he would have wanted, then there's the run up to the Live Aid concert going on in the background (That 20 minute performance of Queen perhaps being amongst the best recorded performance of any live musical act ever), and the movie uses this as the crescendo to which it builds up to. So, you see Freddie coming in the the record company to meet the other band members who according to the movie he's not even spoken with for a period of perhaps years (the movie doesn't specify much of a time line at this part), and they're not happy with him because of his past decision to take a break, and at this meeting they decide to get back together and do the Live Aid gig - this is absolute nonsense, The true history is that Live Aid took place on the 13th. of July 1985, and Queen as a band finished the last date of a tour promoting their album The Works on the 15h of May that same year and they had been touring on and off since September the previous year - so those checkable facts in mind, I can find absolutely no reason why that episode in the bands history would need to be fictionalised to such an extent to suit the medium of film. What super-dooper annoys me, however, is when in the time line of the movie they have Freddie confiding to his other band members that not only has he contracted HIV, but essentially he's dying. In the movie they show this super-sensitive event as having taken place during the band's rehearsals for Live Aid, but - as far a my understanding of this matter goes - and I'm only going by what I've read, you'll have to ask Bryan, Roger or John to confirm this one - this didn't actually happen until 1989. Sorry, can you give me a minute to get a cigarette, I'm annoyed... back in a moment ...( back again ... inhale, puff! - this one's for you, Freddie.) Right, then, see when people say that they can remember where they were when they heard that JFK got shot, well I wasn't born then, but for my generation, a similar thing might be said about the attack on the World Trade Centre, and although, technically such an event as one man's passing pales into insignificance with such a world changing event that caused the deaths of so many people, I can remember with detail where I was when I heard that Freddie Mercury had died. I went to visit my girlfriend at her flat and she was crying, "What's wrong?" I asked her, "Freddie's dead," she replied. I remember laughing in a consoling sense at first, maybe even a bit condescending now I look back at it, as if to say "it's alright, he's someone we never knew," but then we spoke about it, and I thought about it more myself and then we sat down and cried a bit together. It was actually a monumental event in my life, and to so many other people, not only was this showman par exellence no longer with us, but it was the first time that this disease had taken the life of someone who, through their music and seeing them on TV I had grown up with - sure, I was aware of Rock Hudson's passing, but with respect to the memory of Mr. Hudson, he was just a name to me, Freddie Mercury, well, he was Freddie Mercury, there has been and there will be no other, and that event brought so much publicity to the dangers of the HIV virus on a global scale, and I can say for a fact that it affected me personally as a young man in taking cautions in my adult relations. In short, some aspects of the fictionalisation which takes place in this movie may be forgiven in terms of the considerations of making a successful movie - but this fact, for many reasons, in no way shape or form should it have been altered.
Reading the current details about this movie, it was clearly financially successful, having a budget of between $40-50M , it currently shows to have grossed nearly 3/4 of a billion dollars worldwide - a testament perhaps not to the movie itself, but to the enduring popularity of Professor Mercury, but being financially successful is just one thing, at what price do you value the truth?
To conclude, Professor May - you're a gentleman and a scholar and I love your music, Roger you're a top-swordsman and a top drummer, but if ever I meet either of you in real life, after the initial formalities of saying hello have taken place, you are without doubt going to find yourself on the receiving end of my thoughts concerning this travesty of a biopic that you produced, and why? Why is this movie important enough to actually feel genuinely annoyed about? Because this movie will shape the thoughts of how the majority of people view the life of Freddie Mercury. Not so many people read books these days, and the books that are written, particularly biographies of famous people are often written by fans who sensationalise the details and look at the facts not impartially but from their own perspective, or they're written to make money, cash in on the death of a celebrity, and if that was the case here, then this movie could sort of ( and I stress "sort of") be forgiven for some of it's inaccuracies, but the fact that it's produced by two of only three people in the world who could tell the true tale of Freddie's life (as they knew it) and yet they green-lighted an alteration of the true tale to the extent that this movie demonstrates. Nope. Utterly Unacceptable.
Saying that, if you're at a loose end on movie night then it's a good watch, just don't go taking any notes to quote to the Queen fan club later.