The worst: Very sanitized telling of this story
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Full disclosure: Like many people, I love the music of Queen. I would have gone to this movie it was just a bunch of old concert film, and probably would have given it an amazing review. So with that out of the way...
Bohemian Rhapsody is a movie that tells the story of the early days of the band Queen through to their seminal 1991 Live Aid concert performance. I am not sure I would call this a true biopic due to the many historical inaccuracies and extremely sanitized versions of some events (but more on that below). The movie covers Freddie Mercury joining the band, personal live and relationships, early songs and albums, success, tension, decent into hedonism, Mercury's AIDS diagnosis, and the before mentioned Live Aid performance. All of this is presented with Queen's most famous music. The distinctive anthem rock sound served as the perfect backdrop for this peek behind the curtain of one of the biggest bands of the late 70's to the early 90's.
I imagine it would be very difficult to be the lead in a biopic (or faux-biopic), since so much of how people judge the movie will be done through the lens of your performance. Rami Malek does not fail as Freddie Mercury. While some clever prosthetics help with the shape of his face, the real magic is in the attitude and stage presence that Malek is able to recreate. He brings just the right amount of glamour and eccentricity to the role for it to succeed. His performance is the piece that carries the movie forward; his enactment of the evolution of Mercury is the mileposts that help us to see how much time is passing.
I was pretty disappointed with some of the inaccuracies in the film. Nothing really breaks the story but having Queen be quasi-broken up just before Live Aid was unnecessary, the timing of his AIDS was all messed up to fit it into the movie timeframe, a lot of things with his first wife were out of order. All of those were a bit disappointing.
Another small bit of disappointment was in how sanitized everything was. The arguments were mild. The parties were populated but not too crazy (the cleanup was pretty bad, though). Success came easily and at the cost of selling a van. The record deal was waiting in the wings. The doctor appointment where Mercury finds out he has AIDS is the perfect analogy for this rosy version of the story: spotless, clean, and empty. This is Queen as told from people who were very concerned about protecting Queen's (and Freddie Mercury's) legacy. Freddie could look selfish and bad at times because he comes begging back later! Everybody else is a saint, only focused on the music and never engaging in undesirable behavior.
This reminds me of the movie Straight Outta Compton in that it tells a dirty story but forgets about the dirt. I think this is a bit of hubris that plays through when the people who were a part of the experience are allowed to have producing credits for the movie. Nobody wants to play the bad guy on screen, even if there were bad guy moments in life. Everybody wants to be smarter, handsomer, better in every way. A lot of that came across in this movie, and it was worse for having done it.
The movie was very enjoyable, but fell short of great. No risks were taken in the storytelling, no dirt was dug up. Anything potentially offensive was scrubbed out replaced with those spotless, clean walls. I wanted more, but at least the music was fantastic!
Rating - 7/10 The music gets it 5.5 points all by itself.
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