Originally Posted by Dominic
Bohemian Rhapsody, Bryan Singer, 2018
This is really two movies, not one. The first movie is a by-the-numbers bio-pic that checks all the boxes: parental disapproval, band estrangements, awakening sexuality, evil hangers-on trying to break up the band, excess drugs and promiscuousness, and a final, noble battle with a deadly disease.
None of which is all that interesting, to be honest. It's all just the in-between parts while we wait for the music.
One thing that pissed me off was that they played fast and loose with the timeline and when Queen music came out. The first song we see Freddie Mercury play with the other boys in a run-down club is "Keep Yourself Alive."
Really? One of their biggest hits is the very first song Freddie plays with the other band members?
But okay, I can handle a little narrative license. But that's not all. We hear music from Jazz before A Night of the Opera Comes out. We hear "Crazy Little Thing called Love" before a scene of them working on "We Will Rock You."
Speaking of the latter song, we see words flash across the scene that says 1980 and then we see the band working on "We Will rock You."
What? That song's from News Of The World in 1977. The Game came out in 1980.
We do see John Deacon introducing the band to the famous bass line of "Another One Bites The Dust," which is cool, but man, the messed up timeline is annoying. And I'm not even a huge Queen fan, so if it bothers me, I can't imagine what it might do to Queen fanatics.
On to the second movie, which is awesome:
When the film sticks with Queen making music, writing songs, playing with different genres of music, confusing record executives, and - then - playing live shoes - Bohemian Rhapsody soars.
Rami Malek is astonishing as Freddie Mercury. By the end of the movie, he is Freddie, and I forgot what the real Mercury looked like! Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon are played by their twins, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, and Joseph Mazzello. They are incredible. But just like in the real Queen, they naturally take a back seat to Freddie (Malek).
When they play Rio and break the record for biggest paid concert ever, we are there. When they play Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time in concert, it's electrifying.
But Singer holds his cards to his vest for most of the movie, until the end: the famous Queen performance at Live Aid, before 100,000 screaming fans at Wembley and two billion people around the world.
There's an old adage in film and theater: leave them with a WOW and the audience won't care what came before.
Well, Singer gives a wow times ten. We see the entirety of Queen's Live Aid performance, performed by this fake band. At Wembley. In front of 100,000 people.
I'm sure the crowd was a lot of CGI, but damn if it didn't look like they were there.
Singer begins the concert with a bird's eye view of the stadium, many hundreds of feet above, and SWOOPS down into Wembley, over and through the audience, onto the stage while the band comes on, and finishes with a close-up of Freddie's face as he sits at the piano and begins playing "Rhapsody." All in one shot. It is bravura filmmaking.
And Malek just owns Mercury during this, especially the Radio Ga-Ga bit where the entire crowd is doing the music video hand-claps in unison, and when he does his "note heard 'round the world " a cappella.
It's one helluva way to end a movie.
20 minutes of Queen in concert.
Very wise.
So, two movies. The first one gets a C-. The second one gets an A.
Guess that makes it a B-!
*******
One thing the movie did was reaffirm what an amazing, unique talent Mercury was.