Bohemian Rhapsody

Movie, 2018, R

Premise - The biopic of lead singer of famous rock band Queen, Freddie Mercury. The film is about the man behind the music, who pushes the boundaries of rock and roll and stardom. From an Indian immigrant family, to a worldwide queer superstar, we see the full range of the highs and lows of Freddie Mercury's life up until Queen's famous Live-Aid performance in 1985 as he begins his journey with AIDS.

Review - I WAS SO PUMPED FOR THIS MOVIE EVER SINCE RAMI MALEK WAS ATTACHED TO THE ROLE! Oh my gosh and then when those initial pictures of him as Freddie Mercury came out... and then that first teaser trailer... the hype was REAL. I watched that initial teaser trailer about a hundred times and I still think it's one of the best edited trailers I have ever seen. I began thinking that this could be my favorite movie of the year (apart from Fantastic Beasts) and planned to see this film months in advance.

With expectations this high, there really is only downwards to fall. Especially when I saw those critics reviews (averaging around 59%-ish on Rotten Tomatoes as of now), I was starting to prepare myself for disappointment. Not with Rami, never with Rami, but perhaps with the story, or the musical adaptations. Audience reviews, however, were relatively high, so it seemed to be a film that would be lacking in depth, but nevertheless entertaining. That's more or less how it went.

With that said, I loved it. The costumes, the songs, the showiness of it all... I LOVE in-your-face-showy films. Keep that in mind as I spend the rest of the review picking it part.

In terms of screenwriting and overall structure, the film had trouble transitioning through time. The jumps forward often felt anticlimactic and inappropriately timed, though necessary because we needed to get through several years of material. The film was also proportioned much more heavily towards Live-Aid than I had anticipated. The film spends about 20 minutes just on that one concert performance. However, for a concert, 20 minutes is a looooooooooooooooooong scene. And it just cycles back and forth between close-ups of Freddie, medium shots of Freddie, shots of the whole stage, shots of the first several rows of the crowd, huge establishing shots of the entire crowd, shots of friends/family smiling admiringly behind the stage, shots of people watching the television and smiling, and back to Freddie again. Each shot lasts about 3 seconds or so, so just cycle between those shots a gazillion times to fit into 20 minutes. If I were to watch the film back, I would be able to just enjoy it for what it is. Upon an initial viewing, however, I was just flabbergasted by how much of this one concert they were including, and how much it potentially took away from additional story development of Freddie's later life. You can fit a lot of story into 20 minutes.

Actually, as a general directorial comment, the film had a lot of unnecessarily repetitive shots. I loved seeing the cats, but there were a lot of just random interspersed shots of... cats...

I think what irked the critics is the film's lack of depth. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Freddie wanted to be known for his music and only his music. He had a private life that he really felt was nobody else's business. Making this a hard-hitting film about the intimate details of his struggles and eventual death is almost exploitative. So, the filmmakers instead went the route of being celebratory, keeping the bare minimum reference to AIDS and the like in the film. I respect that. On the other hand, GIVE ME THE DRAMA. SPILL THE TEA. I want to see the harsh reality of celebrity life. The film went easy on us by making itself PG-13.

One final critique that has been going around with this film is bisexual erasure. On the one hand, bisexuals everywhere are celebrating that the word bisexual is even used in a box office film. Freddie literally says out loud, "I think I'm bisexual." He is seen romantically with both men and women in the film. That's fantastic and historically accurate. On the other hand, I agree with the many individuals who critique the fact that even though Freddie says he's bisexual, and he is seen with both men and women, he is not actually presented to the audience as bisexual. Which sounds paradoxical, but it's true. For the first half of the movie he is seen exclusively with women, and then the second half of the movie exclusively with men. When he comes out to his fiancee, Mary, as bisexual, she just tells him, "Freddie, you're gay." Apparently, that's what happened in real life, which is why they kept it in. But from that moment forward in the film, he's only seen with men, so people unfamiliar with bisexuality would assume, "Oh, she was just his beard, he was a gay man." To be fair, I have absolutely NO idea what his sexual life was really like, but from my understanding, he identified as bisexual and that still isn't readily apparent to moviegoers. But this is a very nit-picky comment, and honestly I'm just happy with the direction Hollywood is going with showcasing more complicated sexuality. Of course, the film was PG-13, so maybe sexuality could have been more of a forefront in an R-rated picture. (87/100)

Quote - You can quote any of the songs really, but "WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU" is the easiest to replicate and get stuck in your head.

What to watch for - I mean, I was mostly excited for this movie for Rami Malek acting as Freddie Mercury, and he gave a perfect performance. I wasn't even attracted to him as Rami Malek as I normally was, just because he was SO just... Freddie. However, after watching this film, I think that it's really about the music almost even more so than the life, so you watch the film to hear the music and watch the performances.

If you enjoyed this movie, I'd recommend A Star is Born! (which I'm about to review next...)

Directed by Bryan Singer, as he was given the sole credit for this movie. However, he was fired close to the end of filming for conflicting with the cast, and was replaced by Dexter Fletcher. According to the DGA, only one person can receive directorial credit, and Fletcher was credited as a producer.
Distributed by 20th Century Fox