A flawed spectacle

Rating: 8/10 (3 November 2018)

This film has moments of stunning brilliance and moments of almost embarrassing slapdash shoddiness often following each other closely. I'm not really a Queen fan so I can't really comment on the story or the veracity of the portrayal of Mercury's life, so all I can do is offer my opinion on a film.
Two elements carry this film - Rami Malek's dazzlingly captivating performance and the music itself. Malek's portrayal of Mercury is reason alone to see this movie. The final twenty minutes of music give the audience a rush of fast paced musical excitement and is, in the true meaning of the word, awesome (and remember, I'm not really an admirer of Queen so their fans will bloody love it).
That said, the film feels rushed and, at times awkwardly didactic - an introduction to Queen from the perspective of the producers ('Look audience, I wrote this song, look look!). While Malek's acting is sublime, the supporting band members are protrayed as 2D and rather dull. May, Deacon and Taylor are flat characters - at best laddish and played for warmhearted laughs, at worst simply boring. I'm sure there is much more to the real life surviving Queens than this.
For all the talk of this being a film about Queen, it ended up as a film about Mercury and some nice blokes he hung around with in the studio.
At times, the script was poor and the dialogue felt forced as if the film makers had to elbow in utterances that form part of the Queen cannon without any concern about how they would come across on screen. This gives the overriding feel of: 'this happened, then this happened, then this happened...' with die hard fans expected to smile knowingly at each famous quote.
You should see this film though. Really you should. For all its clunky dialogue, often flat supporting cast and bitty storytelling, it is a spectacle.