Review of Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) by Shpostal — 02 Nov 2018

Film bios tread fairly fine lines. They can be absolutely brilliant ("Lincoln") but with musical bios, much of the pleasure derived will be decided by whether the viewer likes the band or performer to begin with.

Myself being a musician and very informed on the bands and music I like, I will be fairly critical but open minded. There was a Beach Boy movie from years ago that was absolutely terrible. It played with the facts, created a bunch of "events" that never happened, like the origins of "Fun Fun Fun", where the boys supposedly saw a blond driving a T-bird outside the studio, when in fact it was written while they were on tour in Australia.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of the great ones. It centers mainly around Freddy Mercury, being the flamboyant entertainer par excellence he was, and if there is one beef it is that the contributions of the rest of Queen are underplayed.

For example, no mention of Brian Mays' unique home made guitar that sculpted the Queen sound, much less his stellar playing. But all in all the film is a compelling and eventually very touching story, factually correct but doesn't exactly follow the exact time lines of the use of Queen music.

As it's told it doesn't matter, however. Plus, the real Freddy Mercury vocals are used unless the actor who portrays him, Rami Malek has an identical voice, which I doubt. But his lip synching is very convincing, and the band is portrayed as accurately as possible, with the actors "playing" with their fingers in the right places at the right times.

Rami Malek is the real star of the show, who channels the late Mercury to precise levels. The tales of excess and Mercury's sexual proclivities are kept to a minimum, only to keep the facts present without the overkill.

Queen would triumph one last time with the original line up at the massive Live Aid global concert in 1985, where the film culminates. We are spared thankfully the severest suffering Freddy would endure as he fought AIDS and would tragically die from in 1991.

But it's a moving tale, and a bit tearful. We can be thankful now that AIDS isn't the automatic death sentence it was in the first years of its rampage. Mercury showed the world that one could still be a top notch entertainer, full of heart and spirit regardless of sex preference.

A much much missed and so much more worthy than homophobes who still insist on attacking the LGBT trans community without cause and plenty of hate.