11/4/18 - Bohemian Rhapsody - 4+/5-/10

There is a bombastic passion and magical allure to Queen’s mesmeric performance at Live Aid. Unfortunately, the movie that begins and ends with said performance only mustered a faint whimper of that majesty. Not a bad movie, but quickly forgettable and a bit disengaging - the type of film that you probably won’t think about again after watching unless you are forcing yourself to write some words about it.

Rami Malek put in a good stint as the melancholy Mercury and the rest of the band was cast with a distinctly smart eye to their look opposite their real-life counterparts, but the film was lacking. The drama was minimal and often routine, lacking stakes from act to act and usually only serving as brief asides between the musical moments. The music was great (though those moments were uneven - some of them were just repetitive and uninteresting, while others really juiced up these magical tunes), but I wanted a film about the band and their struggle, not a Queen musical retrospective with some hit-and-miss TV movie interludes.

It also would have helped if they didn’t take so many liberties with the facts around things like how the band faded apart, the presence & prominence of Mercury’s sexuality, and injecting of tragedy around his AIDS and his Live Aid performance. It often rather harshly set Freddie up to be the antagonist ,rather than a tortured but evolving protagonist. His sexuality was portrayed as a dark and negative influence, which felt wrong, especially when you compared the seeming white-washing of the rest of the band’s exploits (perfect upstanding family men who never drank, did drugs, had extramarital affairs or anything - quite common for 70’s/80’s megabands).

Again, the music is really great. I mean, IT’S QUEEN, of course it’s great. But great music does not a good movie make...usually. It is a fine, if not fun movie experience, but the overriding feeling upon exiting the film is “meh”.