Poignant and pulsating, but also ever so slightly problematic

Rating: 7/10 (8 May 2020)

Rami Malek really throws himself into this role and I can't really fault his commitment or his determination, but there are some problems here but being a generally positive person I'll start with the good things first...
Firstly, Bohemian Rhapsody is very entertaining and despite its 2 hour plus running time the film is not boring and, as I've mentioned above the film does benefit from a lot of commitment and drive from Malek, but as I've said in my summary I did find this film a little problematic
Let me explain; Malek's acting is superb and yet I still didn't find the film to be the showstopper that many others saw it as. I mean let's be honest with ourselves how much of the singing belonged to Malek? I read in the trivia section that it was his voice amalgamated with 2 others. Oh good at least that allayed my suspicions that Malek wasn't singing all of those Queen songs.. This naturally takes away from the film when you more or less see Malek effectively mouthing to Queen's songs or hearing Freddie Mercury's vocals in the background and then passing it off as a vocal performance from Malek. To me this was a little distracting and proved a problem for me for large sections of the film.
Sorry but despite Malek being fairly good at mimicking Freddie, he really can't sing like him (despite the obvious attempts that were made to make him sound like he could). I thought the rest of Queen were developed a little superficially - John Deacon was pretty much sidelined and May & Taylor are barely explored either. This was a film that was produced by May & Taylor (whom you would think would be the ideal people to bankroll such a project), but sometimes too much control and influence can be turned into a negative - I think it was probably their decision to have Malek's voice morphed with other people's which I'm not entirely convinced was the right decision.
Still despite my reservations above I have to admit that I enjoyed Bohemian Rhapsody and found it to be energetic and fun and the finale at Live Aid was a blast. Yet despite a good 'acting' turn from Malek I did find 'performing' Malek to be slightly problematic and the end result is a good, but flawed film.