Bohemian Rhapsody

I see a little silhouette of a man…
This movie covers the rise of the band Queen and their prolific lead singer, Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek). You get to see the formation of the band with Mercury joining forces with Brian May (Gwilym Lee), John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello), and Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy). They start from nothing and sell a van to record their first album and then it’s off to the races with stardom and success. You see glimpses into Mercury’s storied personal life including his long relationship with Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) as well as his relationships with Paul Prenter (Allen Leach) and Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker). The story moves on to cover the band’s eventual demise and Mercury’s spiral downward as he struggles to accept himself and trusts all the wrong people. It culminates with a performance at the Live Aid concert. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the movie. It zips along quite nicely and covers a long span of time and a lot of interesting events in the band’s history. Rami Malek is magnetic as Mercury and nails the many musical performances with a zeal and gusto that made me think he could be a real rockstar. But in trying to cover so many aspects of the band and its lead singer, the movie lost the impact it might have had if it had chosen one topic and explored it deeply. Instead we got a very surface level Queen movie that sails along without making too many waves. As a movie, it’s flashy and entertaining and I had a good time watching it. But all we really got is a faint silhouette of Mercury as a man and Queen as a band and I was hoping to leave with a more filled in picture of the legend.

Film or Movie: Movie

You’ll like this movie if:
1. You love Queen
2. You love Freddie Mercury
3. You like biopics