Movie Review: "Bohemian Rhapsody"

"Bohemian Rhapsody": B-.  Was it Freddie Mercury's teeth that distracted me from reaching the level of total enjoyment I was hoping for from this film?  No, I couldn't possibly be that shallow.  Could I?  Maybe it was the creepy way, with those Boris Karloff eyes, he stared down men whom he targeted for homosexual encounters.  The orgy parties?  How did those people find each other?  And why did his former girlfriend move into an apartment building right across the path from Freddie's place, and participate with him in phone calls and blinking light signals from their respective windows?  It's hard to know.  The clincher for me was the scene where Queen's attorney is working their sound board.  Really?  I was a lawyer for twenty-six years and was in two rock bands.  How come I never got to work a sound board?

I don't usually open my critiques with the negatives, but in this case it is warranted.  However, that's not to say Bohemian Rhapsody, the story of the English band Queen with a focus on its lead singer, Mercury, was a bust, or even that it was uninteresting.  A general overview would be that the story never gets traction, with that being the most important obstacle preventing it from being very recommendable.  Still, the performance of Rami Malek as the mercurial Mercury is a huge plus.  If the late Freddie was still alive and played himself in a separate version of this film, audiences would be hard pressed to come up with many differences.

There are four things I usually look for in evaluating a film about a band, whether such film be a narrated fiction or a documentary.  Two of them are formation and demise.  In other words, how did the band get its start, and what brought about the end?  According to Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddie met guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor when the latter two were sitting in their vehicle's tailgate bemoaning the bad news that their band's lead singer was quitting to pursue a solo career.  Freddie, who had just listened to the band's gig and was now passing by, struck up a conversation with May and Taylor, a conversation which included snide remarks about Freddie's teeth.  A few seconds later they all broke into a sweet a cappella three part harmony, and a union, which evolved into Queen, was formed.  Freddie later credited his extra set of molars for making his singing voice so melodious.

As for the band's somber finish, well, if you attend this film chances are good you were a fan of Queen, in which case you already know most of the mournful details.

The third box I like to check?  Are the non-star band members given distinguishable personalities, or does the script simply put them in the background?  Here, I've got to give Bohemian Rhapsody good marks.  May (Gwilym Lee) and Taylor (Ben Hardy) have distinct personas in their important roles.  They interact with Mercury in several of the movie's scenes, and are instrumental in sustaining Queen while Mercury's life style becomes a flirtation with death.  Extra bonus points, too, for the uncanny resemblance Lee bears to the real May.  Even bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello), in a relatively minor role, provides bits of humor.

Lastly but most importantly, the music itself.  Does the director, in this case controversial Bryan Singer, furnish the audience with displays of what made the band famous?  Mostly this means a replication of live shows, supplemented with writing collaborations, studio work and behind the scenes inter-personal relationships.  As alluded to above, Mercury was an electrifying singer who could amp up (no pun intended) his band's young audiences as soon as he took the stage.  Malek channels Mercury 100%.  The concert scenes are very good, and I appreciated that Singer usually chooses to show entire songs, not merely a verse or a chorus.

The behind-the scenes chapters fell a little short.  Particularly weak was the attempt to convince the EMI record label executive, Ray Foster, that the non-sensical lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody, and the song's six minute length, were worthy of studio time and label promotion.  Not helping matters, production-wise, was the miscasting of comedian Mike Myers in the role of Foster.

I'm undecided about the degree of success in the presentation of the romance between Freddie and Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton).  I was going to write that I just didn't sense the chemistry between the two actors.  Then I read that, in real life, Boynton and Malek have started dating.  Good thing I don't work for It's Just Lunch or one of those other on-line match-making sites.  Boynton, at least in this picture, seems better at emoting heartache than happiness.  Given the fact that her boyfriend was Freddie, there was plenty of opportunity for that.