One of my favorite movies, brings meaning to their songs

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2020)

The new film Bohemian Rhapsody, also the name of one of Queen's most popular songs, released on January 11, 2019 was a controversial film regarding if it was produced amazingly, or not so great. The movie starts out showing young Freddie Mercury finding his passion for singing, his wild style, and meeting the love of his life at a younger age. Freddie, the lead singer of Queen and acted by Rami Malek, goes on to defy stereotypes and conference after joining a small band, and ends up considered one of history's most cherished entertainers. The band's progressive sound and famous songs cause Queen's meteoric upward push in the 1970s. After leaving the band to pursue a solo career where he spirals downward into drugs and parties, Mercury reunites with Queen for the large concert Live Aid after finding out he has the incurable disease Aids-- resulting in one of the finest performances in rock 'n' roll history. The (controversial) director Bryan Singer, did an incredible job with hiring actors, the lead roles are Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, Lucy Boynton as Mary Austin, Gwilym Lee as Brian May, and Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor. These main actors that we mostly see steadily through the movie did an incredible job portraying their roles. Throughout the movie I felt a range of emotions, and not just from the plot line, but from the way the actors brought the script to life. Especially well done by Rami Malek, who channeled the real Freddie Mercury's enthusiasm and unique personality as well as his high energy performances. He even won multiple awards for his role such as Best Actor at the Oscars and even more nominees. Another highlight of the film was of course the music, and the showing of how the songs came to be was really interesting. I have always loved Queen's music, but seeing the background of how the band recorded and thought of the melodies and lyrics gave the music more value and background for me when listening to their music. Among the abundant amount of positives of this movie, the only thing that felt off about this film was the pacing of some scenes. For example the band is thinking of selling their now broken down van in the middle of nowhere, and using the money to buy time in a recording studio; However, the scene then cuts straight to them in a recording studio with no context of how they got there or where they were at first. Although, I enjoyed the movies historical background and deep look into the bands' lives so much that it was easy for me to overlook the issue of pacing in the film. I agree with many fans of the movie that it was an overall great movie and would definitely watch again, and probably again, but movie critics were not so pleased with the film. The film only accumulated 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was due to non date appropriate props, possibly not portraying the timeline of Queen correctly, etc, and even though it had bad reviews the movie won multiple awards and even won the most Oscars for a movie in 2019. As a younger listener I did not experience the time when Queen was ruling the Rock world, so I did not notice those smaller details. In conclusion I recommend seeing Bohemian Rhapsody because of its amazing character portrayal and the interesting and exciting plot line.