Bohemian Rhapsody is a TV miniseries crammed into a movie. For the Queen fans out there, fear not. Freddie Mercury and his band of weirdos get to play most of their greatest hits, and the movie’s casting gives you the best Freddie Mercury you could have probably gotten in movie form. However, a movie’s finite time is probably not enough for Mercury and his planet sized story to be as compelling as it probably should be.
We first meet Farrokh Bulsara (Rami Malek) at the airport loading bags onto planes, long before his amazing performance at Live Aid in Wembley Stadium. This job pays for his nights out, where he follows a local band around featuring guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee) and drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy). As fate would have it, those two just lost their lead singer, leaving time for Farrokh to swoop in and wow them with his tooth aided singing techniques. After adding final piece John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello), the band changes their name to Queen, and Farrokh Bulsara becomes Freddie Mercury. During the band’s rapid ascent to stardom, Freddie marries his loyal female companion Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton). However, during the touring, the Queen frontman realizes he might have more homosexual desires than expected, and Paul Prenter (Allen Leech) uses these latent feelings to get closer to Freddie and potentially cause fissure within the group.
Bohemian Rhapsody is at its best when it’s playing the hits. The formula of idea for song -> band putting pieces of song together -> song gets played at a big concert is fun to watch because the result is one of Queen’s amazing songs, headlined by the larger than life Freddie Mercury. The movie is basically built around Freddie’s story, so having him come up with the big songs makes a lot of sense. The Bohemian Rhapsody creation is one of the highlights of the film, as each band member finds little ways to contribute to the operatic epic, punctuated by a stellar piece of stunt casting in a manager openly complaining about how that song will never be sung by kids on the radio. As the story goes on, the movie goes to some lengths to point out how other members of the band did contribute significantly to Queen’s creative process, like John Deacon discovering the “Another One Bite’s the Dust” baseline first, or Brian May wanting the audience to help with a song by making them do a Stomp Stomp Clap. Moments like these show why each member belongs to Queen and makes the band special, as evidenced by how terrible Freddie was when he tried to go solo. The other great moments Bohemian Rhapsody generates is how in touch with their fans the band was. My personal most powerful moment was the concert in Brazil, where Freddie stops singing for a bit, and the crowd (not an English speaking country), starts singing the song back at the band. These moments all build towards the Live Aid concert to help starving kids in Africa, where the movie climaxes in a 4 piece Queen song at Wembley that brings the house down because of how well Queen has found ways to engage its fans.
However, much like Freddie Mercury’s solo career, Bohemian Rhapsody bites off more than it can chew (sing?). As you spend more and more time watching Farrokh Bulsara become Freddie Mercury, you realize this guy has too many complex facets of his personality to be crammed into a movie. Remember, Freddie is from a conservative family from Zanzibar(!) fleeing political persecution, got married to a woman, electrified the world as a stage performer and songwriter, found out he was gay, was persecuted in the press for being so at the time, and died of AIDS. That’s multiple lifetimes of material for most people. So Bohemian Rhapsody focuses the story around Freddie Mercury and his life, basically relegating everyone else to supporting players. This choice is necessary, and Rami Malek does his damdest to hold thing thing together, which he mostly does dazzlingly so. However, the story fails the basic screenwriting test of “show don’t tell” in order to keep the movie moving forward. After meeting Freddie’s family early, we never see them again until the “reconciliation” at the end. What are they reconciling from? Never seen. Freddie’s sexuality is shown in Bohemian Rhapsody, but it’s barely touched upon. Mary is relegated to sort of a nag on the side who comes in like an angel to provide perspective for Freddie when he needs it. The most criminal mistake the story makes is not one of the band members asked Freddie what the hell was going on with him. I find it hard to believe that none of these guys pulled him aside when the movie keeps stating they are a family, but not really showing us that they are.
Storytelling issues aside, Bohemian Rhapsody is still a delight to watch, especially if you at all love Queen’s music. I came away reminded of how diverse their songs were, and how present in society everything they’ve written has entered our lives. Almost every sporting event I’ve been to has played We Will Rock You or We Are the Champions. I’ve karaoked out to Bohemian Rhapsody. I’ve laughed at Simon Pegg fight zombies to the beat of Don’t Stop Me Now. Watching Freddie light up the stage at the Live Aid concert makes me wish I had seen that show live, and that Rami Malek is quite amazing at showing just how stellar Freddie Mercury actually was. Magnifico…o…o….o……o.