Stunning musical recreations and a beautiful tribute to Freddie Mercury

Rating: 9/10 (25 October 2018)

Loved the movie.
It is funny, moving and just epic in places where it needs to be and feels quite British in parts too.
Rami Malek and the rest of the cast carry the film and story perfectly. Malek easily deserves an Oscar.
As someone who knows a bit about Mercury and Queen I can obviously see straight away that certain parts of Mercury's life are romanticised and not everything happened exactly this way. But I feel they used the "tools" in Mercury's life perfectly to create a story that had a beginning, middle and end and sees Freddie in a sort of hero's journey situation which works really well.
Movies have to be done that way for dramatic effect (See Titanic).
There is perhaps one scene (band are having dinner at Freddies' parents home) where the editing and flow of conversation looked a bit clumsy (when Freddie gets an important phone call). But other than that every scene had relevance and was done well in my opinion.
I can't understand for the life of me what critics wanted to see. But I get the impression their desires come across as a bit creepy and perverted from what I've seen them mostly complain about. As if they wanted to see Mercury being humiliated for a large part of the movie or something. I'm not sure how that would have worked along the feel good music. Furthermore I always think the gossip was exaggerated with Mercury. Someone who was this prolific in the studio and on stage I just don't think had the time to do everything he was ever accused off and to the extent that tabloids wrote about him. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
Regardless this movie is about Mercury the performer, not Mercury "only the homosexual". What critics seem to want is some type of character study that is only based on sexual activities. Nasty! Furthermore the movie actually shows Mercury's reaction to that type of thought and shines the light into the opposite direction. As if to say: "Not so funny then, is it?" Interesting thus also that critics who read Bohemian Rhapsody the song wrong, are doing the same with Bohemian Rhapsody the movie. The irony is quite incredible.
Regardless, critics' reactions seem to be so polarising these days. They seemingly ALL enjoyed The Last Jedi and almost ALL hated this? I don't get it and I think a lot of brown nosing and swapping of brown paper bags is going on, especially with strong Disney brands.
What we are left with instead (and I am glad about) is a stunning tribute to Mercury made with much love, fun and great little nods to details for those in the know (Live Aid volume etc).
The Live Aid sequence is astonishingly well recreated to say the least and something I've never seen done in a musical movie. Biopics of artists are usually quite terrible and fluff over musical performances or you see very little. Not so here.
Perfect sound and visuals. It really looked like the old Wembley was rebuilt for this movie and everyone at Live Aid invited back somehow.
It was fun hearing Queen play around with the 20th Century Fox logo music too.
Utterly compelling and fantastically well executed.
Highly Recommend!