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Bohemian Rhapsody
The direction displays flashes of brilliance, there are some terrific performances, and you can't beat the music, but 2018's Bohemian Rhapsody still falls short as a great biopic, due primarily to a somewhat cliched screenplay that doesn't offer any surprises or new information.
This film introduces us to a young Freddie Bulsara who goes to a dingy London nightclub on the night that the band playing there loses two of its members. We watch Freddie Bulsara become Freddie Mercury and take his place as the band's charismatic front man, who ends up making a lot of the artistic decisions for the band. We get a glimpse into Freddie's personal life as we watch Freddie fall hard for a pretty girl named Mary and simultaneously discover that he's attracted to men as well. We watch the band's meteroic rise to stardom and how it goes to Freddie's head, who decides he wants a solo career. He crashes and burns as a solo act and simultaneously learns he has contracted AIDS just in time to reunite with the rest of Queen for Live Aid.
Yes, another typical, Mickey and Judy, "Let's put on a Show" backstage musical, right? Not exactly, but what this film does have in common with those mindless pieces of fluffs from the 40's is that it offers no surprises. There is nothing here we haven't seen before, nothing groundbreaking in terms of cinematic storytelling and we really don't learn anything about Queen or Freddie Mercury that couldn't be gleaned from the Internet. The fact that the central character is bisexual does bring a new layer to the show biz romance part of the story, but even that degenerates into silly melodrama that almost wasn't worth exploring at all.
On the other hand, the stuff that works here worked extremely well. Honestly, my favorite moments in the film had more to do with the band than with Freddie's twisted life. My three favorite scenes in the film revolved around how the band created three of their biggest hits, "We will Rock You", " "Another One Bites the Dust", and especially how they created the title song and the initial resistance they met from their label producer (Mike Meyers) about it. I loved the way the intricacy of putting this record together was broken down for us as we watched the individual pieces of the record being strung together and, despite their initial confusion, the band's commitment to Freddie's vision for "Bohemian Rhapsody", which turned out to be Queen's masterpiece.
The film is slow to start, but as the story progresses, it ignites and some of the direction is just dazzling, though I'm not sure where the credit goes for this, because I read that even though Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) is credited as director, he walked off the film before it was completed and I have to wonder if that has anything to do with why the film's second half is dramatically better than the first, but films are rarely shot in order, so I don't know who is responsible, but patience is required of the viewer because this one takes a little while to get going.
In addition to the above mentioned songs, the film offers other Queen classics like "Keep Yourself Alive", "Killer Queen", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "We are the Champions". And yes, TPTB did have the sense to have the lead lip-synch to original Freddie Mercury recordings...no duplicating that voice.
And even if he doesn't do his own singing, Rami Malek offers a dazzling, Oscar-worthy turn as Freddie, clearly a collaboration of himself and the director(s). Malek really did his homework here, not only recreating Mercury's onstage persona flawlessly, but doing some very convincing fingering on the keyboard as well. I also enjoyed Gwilym Lee and Ben Hardy as Queen band members Brian May and Roger Taylor, respectively. The film also deserves attention in the areas of film editing, set direction, sound, and sound editing. It's not everything it should have been, but what's there ain't bad.
The direction displays flashes of brilliance, there are some terrific performances, and you can't beat the music, but 2018's Bohemian Rhapsody still falls short as a great biopic, due primarily to a somewhat cliched screenplay that doesn't offer any surprises or new information.
This film introduces us to a young Freddie Bulsara who goes to a dingy London nightclub on the night that the band playing there loses two of its members. We watch Freddie Bulsara become Freddie Mercury and take his place as the band's charismatic front man, who ends up making a lot of the artistic decisions for the band. We get a glimpse into Freddie's personal life as we watch Freddie fall hard for a pretty girl named Mary and simultaneously discover that he's attracted to men as well. We watch the band's meteroic rise to stardom and how it goes to Freddie's head, who decides he wants a solo career. He crashes and burns as a solo act and simultaneously learns he has contracted AIDS just in time to reunite with the rest of Queen for Live Aid.
Yes, another typical, Mickey and Judy, "Let's put on a Show" backstage musical, right? Not exactly, but what this film does have in common with those mindless pieces of fluffs from the 40's is that it offers no surprises. There is nothing here we haven't seen before, nothing groundbreaking in terms of cinematic storytelling and we really don't learn anything about Queen or Freddie Mercury that couldn't be gleaned from the Internet. The fact that the central character is bisexual does bring a new layer to the show biz romance part of the story, but even that degenerates into silly melodrama that almost wasn't worth exploring at all.
On the other hand, the stuff that works here worked extremely well. Honestly, my favorite moments in the film had more to do with the band than with Freddie's twisted life. My three favorite scenes in the film revolved around how the band created three of their biggest hits, "We will Rock You", " "Another One Bites the Dust", and especially how they created the title song and the initial resistance they met from their label producer (Mike Meyers) about it. I loved the way the intricacy of putting this record together was broken down for us as we watched the individual pieces of the record being strung together and, despite their initial confusion, the band's commitment to Freddie's vision for "Bohemian Rhapsody", which turned out to be Queen's masterpiece.
The film is slow to start, but as the story progresses, it ignites and some of the direction is just dazzling, though I'm not sure where the credit goes for this, because I read that even though Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) is credited as director, he walked off the film before it was completed and I have to wonder if that has anything to do with why the film's second half is dramatically better than the first, but films are rarely shot in order, so I don't know who is responsible, but patience is required of the viewer because this one takes a little while to get going.
In addition to the above mentioned songs, the film offers other Queen classics like "Keep Yourself Alive", "Killer Queen", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "We are the Champions". And yes, TPTB did have the sense to have the lead lip-synch to original Freddie Mercury recordings...no duplicating that voice.
And even if he doesn't do his own singing, Rami Malek offers a dazzling, Oscar-worthy turn as Freddie, clearly a collaboration of himself and the director(s). Malek really did his homework here, not only recreating Mercury's onstage persona flawlessly, but doing some very convincing fingering on the keyboard as well. I also enjoyed Gwilym Lee and Ben Hardy as Queen band members Brian May and Roger Taylor, respectively. The film also deserves attention in the areas of film editing, set direction, sound, and sound editing. It's not everything it should have been, but what's there ain't bad.