Review of Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) by Cinema With C — 01 Dec 2018

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) has a sequence where the titular song is released to their original, critical reviews. Queen's song was later seen as a masterpiece, but in its initial release was only deemed "Perfectly adequate" by some. The latter, and probably not the former, describes the film of the same name.

Bryan Singer (or Dexter Fletcher) has created a perfectly adequate musical biopic here that doesn't do much revolutionary, but at least doesn't rob you of any time.

That is carried very much so by Rami Malek and co-stars disappearing into their roles as Freddie Mercury et al as Queen. Malek truly steals the show as the band's frontman, bringing the energy and life and mannerisms of the iconic Mercury. If there's one solid good to take from this film, it' that Malek's performance is a perfect capture.

Bohemian Rhapsody is bolstered by the fact that Queen (I would say objectively, but let' say in my opinion) have so many brilliant songs and of course that means this film gets to flaunt them all. Each song is a performance of all elements coming together and you get Queen's greatest hits translated onto the big screen. If you're gonna watch this movie at the cinema please at least splash out on the IMAX for the big screen, big sound experience.

If Bohemian Rhapsody was just a concert movie starring Queen or even just these facsimiles of Queen, it would be perfect, but the execution of this narrative biopic brings the film down a notch or two. There's always a curious case of poetic license with biopics, First Man recently has a bit of this, but Bohemian Rhapsody creates many an eyebrow raise.

I am by no means a Queen aficionado but I'm sure I'm not the only one doubting just how fortuitous and neat the story of Queen and Freddie Mercury is. The film saunters for the majority of it with next to no conflict and brushing past themes and issues and moments that could have done with more fleshing out. Events go by and you wonder just a little too much on whether they actually happened. Usually you don't need to bust out the fact checking like a Neil deGrasse Tyson of film, but this is a biopic with such glaring leaps of logic and license you can't switch that off.

There's just something off about cartoonishly evil characters or how people just stumble upon the music they'e iconic for. The creation of the titular song felt like it was a through-line of the story until it suddenly wasn't, and that thread was full of "his is a bit too on the nose".

Bohemian Rhapsody has as much subtlety as Mercury's character. Very fun, well performed, nostalgic, and goddamn, that last sequence would be an all-timer if it wasn't just a shot for shot recreation with iffy special effects enhancement.

Inconsistent style over substance, it brushes past and messily tackles themes such as Mercury's sexuality and later years all for another hit Queen track.

It feels like one for fact-checking, but it also feels like Bohemian Rhapsody will forever remain Perfectly Adequate. And that's only down to the music of one great band, and one great group of actors translating that to screen.