Stone Cold Lazy

Rating: 3/10 (28 November 2018)

I'm going to be frank, I did not like Bohemian Rhapsody. The story writes itself, and that's part of the problem. There is very little effort put in and it feels like the director skimmed Freddy Mercury's Wikipedia page and whipped this film together as a cheap cash-grab on the legacy which Freddy made for himself with little care on providing a deep, respectful, and meaningful biopic on the legend of Queen.
The biggest problem with this film is its blatant disingenuous nature, opting for Hollywood cliches over either fact-based story-telling or fantastical surreal execution. What results is a muddled mess which is neither true to life nor outrageous enough to capture the spirit of Freddy Mercury at any point, instead opting for a middle-ground that takes the shortcomings of both approaches with dull, drawn out bits of melodrama which never goes deeper than surface-level and moments of artistic liberty with about as much artism as Freddy the Hedgehog and as much liberty as North Korea. I find myself disgusted knowing that Sacha Baron Cohen's R-rated version of the film would have been much more interesting than what I'd watched, and I expressed the same concerns over Cohen's ideas that the surviving band members did. This film is so safe and laid back and set on preserving Freddy's image that it makes AIDS seem better than a common cold, and is filled with numerous sex scenes ripped straight from daytime television. To say that the film was sanitized would be an understatement; this film is about as uncomfortable with its homoerotic subject matter as Catholic priests are with adult women. The scene of Another One Bites the Dust was so dated in its portrayal of homoeroticism that I thought the movie should have been called Freddy Goes to Hollywood. With its PG-13 rating, there certainly could have been more done in terms of the sexuality, and especially given the Freddy's AIDS there certainly should have been much more touched on here and it should have been a bigger focus rather than the fluffy melodrama before this point. If you're going to do a film about a legend, it deserves only the best, deepest, most sincere telling one can give, especially when this film goes on to portray Freddy as a perfectionist and then hands the directorial duties over to Bryan Singer, director of mediocre, soulless, sub-par blockbusters such as X-Men: Apocalypse and Jack the Giant Slayer. If this film wanted to be a great one, it should have been more like Walk the Line, a serious and gritty film about the lives of those in the band, or it should have been Whiplash, a crazy wild ride that sacrifices realism in favor of bashing you over the head with stupid, stylish, vacuous, guilty-pleasure no-holds-barred entertainment.
Rami Malek did an excellent job as Freddy Mercury, and the interactions between he and the bandmates are some of the only bits of livelihood in this otherwise paint-by-numbers Hollywood film. Though much of the melodrama was overlong and petty in the grand scheme of things, the actors did a fine job bringing scenes to life with some charm despite lackluster pacing and proper editing (Perhaps the filmmakers were running out of tape and had to make do with a single cut.). Malek brings an energy to Mercury that is miserably not met by any other element of the filmmaking process, and the creative overdubbing from multiple voices to mimic Mercury's is practically seamless and renders the aspects of the film outside of musical performances utterly trite in comparison, as I found myself struggling to stay invested in the in-between parts.
The soundtrack is decent, but lacking a few staples in Queen's career. Notable exclusions are Stone Cold Crazy, Death on Two Legs, Bicycle Race, I Want It All, and One Vision, which are each among Queen's greatest tracks. Instead, we get two versions of Bohemian Rhapsody, Keep Yourself Alive, and The Show Must Go On. This could have easily been remedied with more focus on the music rather than petty infighting with the band, allowing more songs in the movie, and with less redundancy in the film itself regarding tracks which appear more than once. There is also a grave missed opportunity to portray David Bowie performing Under Pressure with Queen, which would have been incredible especially given Bowie's recent death and comparable legendary status as a musician. Instead, Bowie receives a single passing mention in the film and not a single legendary artist mentioned are shown performing (eg. Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, or even REO Speedwagon who hardly have much of a legacy to tarnish). Several songs are even out of order in the film, such as the second version of Seven Seas of Rhye, Fat Bottomed Girls, and Another One Bites the Dust.
The inaccuracies are plentiful and too numerous and too important to ignore, especially given the pseudo-factual presentation of the film. Much creative liberty taken throughout the film's plot destroy the film's credibility throughout. In reality, Freddy discovered his condition after the Live Aid concert, and even the concert itself was no matter of difficulty as the band hadn't broken up, and Freddy's solo project was not a problem for the band, and Queen was not squeezed into Live Aid last minute as the film portrays, and Freddy did not give an emotional speech about his AIDS just prior to the performance, as all of these contrivances were added to appeal to the generic Hollywood drama formula. Even the formulation of the band is gratuitously simplified and given that boring ol' Hollywood sheen, and thus literally every element of the film must be brought into question as I truly believe at this point that not a single moment in this film is true to real life. Is this the real life? No. It's just fantasy, and the true shame is that it's not even a self-aware way, which would make such liberties borderline acceptable.
If you want a great biopic about a legendary musician, watch Walk the Line, and if you're not interested in Johnny Cash then there's certainly nothing worth watching I suppose. If you liked this film, you're certainly allowed to, but many people I've seen praising this film simply love the band Queen and the soundtrack of the film and they overlook the unforgivable shortcomings of this shamefully lackluster motion picture. If you insist on bringing your family to this, you'll have to Tie Your Mother Down, otherwise she'll be leaving in offense as she grew up with Queen and truly cares about the legacy this film abysmally fails to tell.