Movie Review: Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Bryan Singer.

Written by: Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan.

Starring: Rami Malek (Freddie Mercury), Lucy Boynton (Mary Austin), Gwilym Lee (Brian May), Ben Hardy (Roger Taylor), Joseph Mazzello (John Deacon), Mike Myers (Ray Foster), Aidan Gillen (John Reid), Allen Leech (Paul Prenter), Tom Hollander (Jim Beach), Jess Radomska (Cheryl), Aaron McCusker (Jim Hutton), Max Bennett (David), Ace Bhatti (Bomi Bulsara), Meneka Das (Jer Bulsara).

 

One of the most frustrating things about certain biopics is when you realize that they have perfectly cast the lead role, and the person’s life who is being dramatized is endlessly fascinating, and yet the movie you are watching is a bore. That happens in Bohemian Rhapsody, which is about the band Queen – but more specifically is about its lead singer Freddie Mercury, who is played in a very good performance by Rami Malek, but takes such a superficial and artificial approach to the singer’s life, and ticks off every clichéd box in the biopic canon. It makes you wonder if any of the filmmakers who still make these biopics have ever seen Jake Kasdan’s great Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which mocks the clichés embraced by films like Ray or Walk the Line. Bohemian Rhapsody is more cliché ridden than either of those films – so much so, that at times, I almost thought the strategy here was to do a straight faced remake of Walk Hard.

 

The film basically covers Queen from their formation in the early 1970s, to their Live Aid concert in 1985. Along the way, it superficially covers Mercury’s personal life as well. When the film starts, he is working at the airport, and is being mocked for being a “Paki” – even if he isn’t one, the term is still offensive, and he faces it constantly. He comes from a conservative, religious family of Indian descent – although he was born in Zanzibar, before coming over the England. That, by the way, is about the extent the movie covers the questions of Mercury’s ethnicity and religion as well – perhaps because Mercury himself didn’t much talk about it, yet if the point of these biopics is to get the inside story behind the one we know, the movie kind of fails at that. It also covers his early marriage to Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton), which ends after he’s famous when he announces to her that he’s bisexual (we already got this, because the movie shows us Mercury making goo-goo eyes at a trucker going into a bathroom – and following him in. From there, life is one big party for Mercury – who the movie also underlines, was lonely throughout this time, isolated from the people who cared about him, and basically all by himself.

 

Throughout the film, alternating between the personal stuff, is stuff about the band coming up with this biggest hits – in each case, it’s almost always a flash of inspiration, following by a montage of them recording it, then performing it to screaming fans who eat it all up. Mike Myers shows up as a record executive, apparently just so he can tell the band that young people will never head bang in their cars to Bohemian Rhapsody (get it - because Myers was in Wayne’s World where they do just that). Of course, the band clashes with each other, they argue – but underneath it all, they love each other. They are a family. You can tell this is the “official” version of the story – approved by everyone involved – because none of the people we know actually comes off as an asshole.

 

To be fair, through it all, Rami Malek is working his stuff in every scene trying to sell the film and his performance. It kind of helps a little bit that the film is so clichéd, so you can infer information the movie brushes over. I’ve heard complaints that the film brushes over Mercury’s ethnicity, religion, sexuality etc. – and those complaints have merit, except when you realize that this is a film that brushes over just about everything. It takes a surface level view of everyone and everything in it.

 

And when the music kicks it, the film really is at its best. Seeing the film on the big screen is the right choice, so at least the sound of the performances can course through you during the big, famous anthems. The Live Aid sequence that pretty much ends the film is the best, most prolonged example of it – and is really when the film comes alive. It is a reminder of why this film got made in the first place – because Queen has made music that has lasted now for decades.

 

Everything other than the music though is all just disappointingly bland. I would watch another biopic about Mercury with Malek in that role in a heartbeat – I just wish that the filmmakers would take some more chances with the material. There’s a great movie in this story somewhere – but this isn’t it.