Over hyped

Rating: 5/10 (8 February 2019)

How this could average a score of 8/10 is not beyond me; my opinion is that people have confused strong sentiment for a good movie. Our feelings for Freddie Mercury do not make this movie better and Rami Malek's excellent mimicking of Freddie don't make his acting performance stronger.
The movie's pace is not helped by Malek's rightful devotion to playing a realistic version of Freddie, because Freddie's gauche manner and innate shyness slow down almost every piece of dialogue. The other cast members don't help the pace either, and I never once forgot that I was watching a film, a film with a number of wooden performances: most notably the other band members, with Gwilym Lee about the only one to pull out a good performance. Joseph Mazzello is so annoying as John Deacon that I could barely watch him; admittedly it wasn't a particularly brilliant role in the first place, but he looked like the dictionary definition of 'phoning it in'.
On the plus side, Malek is very good and the recreation of the great live moments in Queen's incredible career are very well done, as are the romantic relationships in Freddie's life; a little coy perhaps, particularly when dealing with his homosexuality, but there does at least appear to be genuine affection and love between him and Mary and him and Jim.