A Sanitized Freddie Mercury/Queen Story

Rating: 5/10 (18 April 2020)

What do you get when you write a movie about perhaps one of the most enigmatic, flamboyant, front men in rock history, but keep it clean for a PG-13 rating? You get this film, an entertaining, enjoyable movie that plays it safe and skirts the more dark elements.
Freddie Mercury was notorious for his sexual relationships, his indulgence, his drug use, his diva behavior that made him truly a pain in the rear end to deal with in the later years. Yet, in this movie, all of that is touched on with kid gloves and we get Freddie, the PG-13 version, with some of these traits, but only to the degree that it moves the film forward. We don't dive deep into his darkest days, and we get none of the edge surrounding his choices during this time.
Beyond that, the rest of the members of Queen are merely props to highlight Mercury it seems. We know little about them, and they seem interchangeable parts, which, for a band as successful and popular as they still are even post Mercury, strikes me as odd. Supposedly, Roger Taylor and Brian May were very particular how their characters were portrayed in the film and as producers, edited out many of the less flattering traits each of them possessed. Why? The best bio films show all the warts and unflattering elements. Here, the keep the darkest parts of Mercury's life under wraps and give their own characters no color.
The truth is played with loosely all throughout the movie. Stuff is left out, events happen differently than how they truly happened, the timeline is not followed in a particular way. Also, for a band known for being extremely competitive during songwriting sessions (Queen was known as The Police before The Police when it came to this), this is only glossed over at best.
Overall, it's an average movie. Entertaining, but missing so much it could, and should, have included.