Bohemian Rhapsody

Score:  B-

Directed by Bryan Singer
Starring Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello
Running time: 134 minutes
Rated PG-13

Long Story Short:  Bohemian Rhapsody is a biopic of Queen, the famous rock band and its one-of-a-kind star, Freddie Mercury.  Rami Malek does an outstanding job in the lead role, and the music helps the film ride along perfectly smoothly.  But it is also overwhelmingly cliche, with a script that mostly hampers any attempts the film makes to show the band's true background.  If all you want is pure entertainment, it's just fine, but otherwise, hold off on this.


In 1970, a young British immigrant named Farrokh (Malek) decides to chase his dreams, joining a band named Smile that just lost its lead singer.  The band, renaming itself Queen, struggles along the countryside doing gigs, but gets its big break when manager John Reid (Gillen) discovers them and they sign a contract with the record label empire EMI.  Thus begins a whirlwind decade for Queen, building a strong reputation as performers but also stretching themselves musically even when it puts them in conflict with their business associates trying to maintain the status quo.  The pressures of fame and fortune, along with Farrokh's - now Freddie Mercury - private struggles, eventually begin to pull the band apart.  But a once-in-a-generation event offers the band an opportunity to cast off the mounting wounds and resentments and come together again.

Bohemian Rhapsody boasts a pleasant cast, ranging from a standout lead performance to heavily cliched parts.  Rami Malek stars as Queen's lead singer, Freddie Mercury, and the intensity and commitment of his performance raises the whole film significantly.  Malek bursts with frenzied energy in concert scenes, and is just as focused and passionate in quieter scenes in which only his protuberant eyes show the conflict, hurt, or love he is feeling.  While his development is somewhat simplified and dulled by the script, Malek keeps his superstar character very much the charismatic, intriguing lead he needs to be throughout.  Lucy Boynton plays Mercury's wife, Mary Austin, and does pretty well with what she's given: plenty of stereotypical rockstar-girlfriend stuff, but she takes advantage of the more interesting anger-to-acceptance-to-warmth transition later on.  Allen Leech, as Mercury's personal manager turned lover, Paul, goes too far into villainous territory, suckered in by the script's many minefields.  The rest of the Queen band does a very solid, understated job, showing genuine, warm camaraderie (though the conflicts often feel contrived).  There are plenty of other small parts, notably Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones) as Queen's slick manager, and particularly Mike Myers as a comedically idiotic EMI executive.

Bohemian Rhapsody is an entertaining biopic driven by a star performance that goes down smooth - but at the same time, it's too smooth, an artificial and cliched journey of just another rock band.  Even if you know nothing about Queen beyond their music before you see the film (like me), you'll know pretty much how this goes.  Working class kid decides to leap into the world of rock that he's admired from afar, gets a girlfriend as he becomes cool in his ragtag new outfit, surges to stardom on a big break, then deals with intra-band turmoil before rediscovering the magic by the end.  Admittedly, even when you see it coming, much of this is still fun or at least diverting, particularly when driven by some nice acting and a (mostly) up-tempo pacing.  The filmmakers also wisely throw in plenty of musical scenes - not only serving as interludes between plot sections, but of course, splurging on why we're interested in Freddie and Queen in the first place.  My favorite section of the film is when it effectively combines the music with the obligatory plot points, in the recording of their masterpiece titular song in seclusion, just the band enjoying themselves and producing great humor along with the tunes.  However, the script is criminally cliched throughout the film, leading not just to the ruin of a number of scenes' sincerity and believability, but ultimately betraying the band itself through the loss of whatever unique spirit they surely had.  Nearly every scene is constructed according to what the audience expects to see rather than what it needed to show (if it was needed at all), and the dialogue is at times so bad that even Malek can't bring himself to convey it convincingly.  It is only in the music, then, that the film seems to capture what Queen really was, and beyond that, the audience is left to blindly speculate just how much of the rest of the story gets to the truth.

***

Bohemian Rhapsody, while offering some pleasing elements, ultimately serves as a disappointment in the effort as a rock band biopic.  Although I haven't read any individual reviews, its 61% score on Rotten Tomatoes would seem to reflect this.  Truly, if all you're looking for is a familiar, undemanding story with a great lead performance and music, then this is a perfectly good choice, and  a pretty entertaining one.  But if you're looking for a great film, and/or as a Queen fan, looking for a complex, nuanced take on your favorite band, then this will leave you wanting.  I know very little about their history, but have been told that the film deviates in a number of crucial ways from reality, a reality apparently not convenient to the flow the filmmakers wanted.  You're not going to find anything else like it in theaters so give it a try if it's what you're in the mood for - otherwise, I suggest waiting for Netflix, if at all.



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