The Oscar for best actor will go to Rami Malek. Say what you want about the thousands of people who have portrayed other people in biographies and you’d be far fetched to find someone who pulled off such an iconic person perfectly.
Bohemian Rhapsody is a flawed picture and the only two aspects that make it amazing is simply Malek’s performance and the Queen concerts. The final 25 minutes of the film, which is an epic portrayal of Queen’s 1986 Live-Aid performance, will rock you like anything else ever caught one film. Those few precious minutes are simply worth the price of admission alone. One of my first CDs was Queen’s Greatest Hits. Sadly I had never heard of Radio Gaga or Don’t Stop Me Now and today they are the most played songs on my iTunes.
What Bohemian Rhapsody accomplished is the polished clean version of Queen’s rise to fame. It is a film that can be enjoyed by everyone. It doesn’t expose the dark secrets and it doesn’t spend the whole time highlighting all the hits. It focuses on the struggles, the drama, and the celebrations.
There isn’t a single band in the history of music who had a drama-free existence. I am not the world’s biggest Queen fan, so I don’t know what is true here and what was dramatized to sell tickets. Freddy Mercury is a rock legend. No matter what his flaws were and no matter what he did, I don’t think he was ever a bad guy. Sure his ego may have ruffled feathers in the group, but history does show this is a very common occurrence in rock n’ roll.
Three of the original members are still alive today, which allowed them to tell their own story through other actors. That’s one aspect I take away from all the negative press about the movie. If these guys didn’t like what they saw, they wouldn’t have given their stamp approve. Like so many things in life, sometimes less is more and some things are better left unsaid or untold. 7/10
Ten Stars or Less 