Bohemian Rhapsody: All Glitz, Little Else

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Director:  Bryan Singer
Writers:   Anthony McCarten (story), Peter Morgan (story), Anthony McCarte (screenplay) 
Cast:  Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello, Aidan Gillen
Genre:  Drama/Biography
Run-time: 2h 13m
Rating: 2.5/5

If the quality of a movie was determined by the set design and re-creation of events, Bohemian Rhapsody would be one of the very best. Fortunately, the quality of a movie of such a genre, apart from historical accuracy, also depends on the feelings it manages to evoke in the audience. It is in this aspect that this Queen movie advertised as the Freddy Mercury biopic royally fails.

Going into the theatre, I was aware of the initial international critical reaction. The RT (RottenTomato) score stood at 51% meaning only 51 % of the total reviewers liked or loved the movie. As such I was not expecting it to be anything special. Still I was hoping it was a good movie. I WANTED it to be a good movie. But the reality is, it is at best an average movie. It struggles to decide whose story to tell. It tries to be a Mercury biopic as well as a Queen history and manages to only touch both things superficially.

The movie offers very little about Mercury and Queen that isn’t already in the media and in YouTube documentaries. In a movie of its scale and genre, one expects to be reeled in both emotionally and mentally. And although Bohemian Rhapsody does try to hit you in the heart with Freddie’s struggle with his sexuality and family, it drowns in the glitz and the re-creation of iconic music videos and performances.

I’m in no way questioning the importance of the re-creations. In fact, the movie pulls them with aplomb. They feel as real as they get. The attention to detail is worthy of all the praise. But the fact is, the film makers and the writers spend far too much time and effort to re-creating them rather then focusing a bit more in the story. The movies gives us information and they are readily available thanks to Google and YouTube. Add to it the fact that a size-able chunk of these information are inaccurate. Mercury’s introduction to the Band, Mercury revealing having AIDS to the band-mates, the rearrangement of release dates are just some examples. Properly told, all this would just be minor issues, artistic freedom. But with a poor execution this has come front and center. In addition, Queen’s and Mercury’s frenzied media controversy is set aside with just video and text montages like it was a no biggie.

Then there’s the issue with the songs. No, I’m not complaining about the rendition by Malek and Co. My issue is with how the songs were used. The movie has 15! soundtracks and with queens discography I knew quite a few brilliant songs were bound to be left out. What I was not ready for was parts of songs being thrown around and sometimes placed in such a way it undermined the tone of the scene.

Having to wait to the very end to listen to one complete Queen song was the worst part. However, when the iconic Live Aid performance did come, and believe me the movie’s rendition was flawless, it left me feeling those 20 precious movie minutes could have been used to tell a more detailed and well developed story of the legend that was Freddie Mercury. After all the re-creation of events, despite being undoubtedly Herculean, is the bare minimum in a movie of its stature.







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