Bohemian Rhapsody(Film) Review

MY RATING: 4/5

You will not see a more perfect and imperfect rock and roll biopic than Bohemian Rhapsody, which does many things extremely well, other things sort of average, and one thing flawlessly: capturing the immense charisma and panache of Queen singer Freddie Mercury.Jamie Foxx’s full-body inhabitationof Ray Charles just got some competition at the top.Mr Robot actor Rami Malek is brilliant, exactly mimicking Mercury’s mischievously outlandish swagger yet maintaining a looseness that allows the character to scan as three-dimensional. Even Queen fans who remember the real Freddie won’t believe their eyes, especially after re-watching concert footage on YouTube, which Malek doubtless did, and plenty of it. His performance is the film’s engine. Fans will be similarly heartened by the amount of play Mercury’s relationship with confidante Mary Austin receives in the final cut. More on that later.

Malek’s magnificence — and it’s hard now to recall that Sacha Baron Cohen was originally attached to this role — is also part of what makes Bohemian Rhapsody’s weaker moments land with a thud; the contrast is so jarring. And never more so than in the scenes leading up to the band’s triumphant (there is no other word for it) 1985 performance at Live-aid, when Mercury takes his new and miraculously located beau home to meet his borderline homophobic family en route to the concert.

First he finds a needle in a haystack, then he makes peace with his strait-laced old man, all before casually dazzling 40 percent of the world's population at the time with a heart-stopping performance.

The performance scenes, particularly the showpiece Live Aid concert, broadcast the excitement — and inherent fashion crimes — of eighties-era Wembley Stadium at full blast. (In subsequent interviews, Malek has confirmed this iconic scene of that iconic performance was the first thing that was shot with the surviving members of Queen watching, further underscoring just how much he nailed it).Also riveting is a press conference scene where Mercury, hammered by the media on every subject except the new music the band is there to discuss, must deflect like a veteran politician. The scene is an avatar of sorts for the horrendous treatment soon to come Mercury’s way when the UK tabloid press got word of his illness, detailing his decline via front-page photos of an ever-more-gaunt Mercury darting for cover.

That ugly episode in Mercury’s life — and yes, he denied having AIDS until the very end but it was his illness and his life at stake — is not directly addressed in Bohemian Rhapsody, but advance concern that Queen would simply gloss over Mercury’s sickness in the film prove unfounded. One wonders if his actual revelation of his HIV status to his bandmates was as cavalier as portrayed here but no fault on May or Taylor for wanting to accentuate the positive in Mercury’s extraordinary life and career. We know the end was painful and sad.