[5.8/10] If you put a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters and told them to make a music biopic, eventually they would come up with Bohemian Rhapsody. There is not much abjectly wrong with the film. There’s few points it doesn't deliver with all the force of a screeching high note, and its beats will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a rock star biopic before, but it is, by and large, capable at worst. The songs sound right. The trajectory has the expected ups and downs. And there’s even a few moments of jocularity and, on occasion, real honesty that let you see a hint of the genuine artistry Freddie Mercury himself brought to the table, peeking through.
But it is a film made of balsa wood, so flimsy and ultimately insubstantial that while you can faintly appreciate the shape what’s being built with it, the structure itself isn’t sturdy enough to support much of anything.
Bohemian Rhapsody, for the three people who’ve been living under a rock since 1968 and/or who can’t put two and two together, tells the story of the rise-and-fall-and-rise-again career of Queen, and its lead singer, Freddie Mercury, in particular. It charts Freddie and the band’s path from sulky pubs in London to headline tours of packed stadiums, with all the messy romance, professional peaks and valleys, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll that inevitably comes with it.
That’s the biggest sin of the film. Nothing in it surprises you. Even if you knew nothing about Queen’s superlative catalogue, even if you’d never heard of Freddie Mercury, even if you’d never seen a band biopic before, you’d still be able to see every damn beat of this thing coming from a mile away. Conflicts and plot obstacles are telegraphed from a mile away. Most of the characters have two-dimensions at most. And if that’s not enough to let you predict what’s going to come next, pretty much every thought or feeling the main characters have is vocalized right when it’s needed for the story.
It’s a dull story, particularly in the beginning when pretty much every chapter in the life of Queen consists of “nobody believed in us, but we did it anyway, and we succeeded because we’re great!” There’s little struggle or true hindrance for most of Bohemian Rhapsody. Instead, the bad guys tell Freddie & Co. no, and are either thwarted or jettisoned or recognize the group’s brilliance for what it is, so that our heroes can be Right All Along.
At the same times, its villains are thin and cartoonish, from the record company executive who likes their schlockiest song and tells them their record will never be head-bobbing hit (played, with rib-elbowing, audience-winking affinity by Mike Myers), to the insider turncoat who stabs his superior in the back, keeps away Freddie’s loved ones, and nigh single-handedly breaks up the band just long enough for them to reunite for even more triumph. As in all cinematic biographies where the living still have a degree of creative control, it’s clear who still has an ax to grind, and the line between the film’s heroes and villains is thick and obvious.
The only character who gets any complexity here is Freddie himself, which, given that he’s the star of the show and the film, isn’t a bad place to spend your ammunition. The best thing that can be said about Bohemian Rhapsody is that Rami Malek is clearly giving it his all as Mercury. He prances and preens and rocks on stage and manages to capture the late frontman’s kinetic energy as a performer. He delivers more than a few cutting or self-effacing remark with a wry, knowing style that makes Freddie lovable even when he’s being kind of a jerk. And while in the quieter moments Malek’s affectations can feel more like tics and bits of indicating rather than seamless facets of his character, he takes a script that does its central figures no favors and still manages to wring a modicum of feeling out of it in a few choices moments.
Bohemian Rhapsody’s best setting is when it eschews those dramatic monologues and failed attempts at being serious or making a statement, and instead just goes for being fun. Queen’s music is still infectiously great decades later. While the editing gets overly choppy, and a few performance scenes drag on too long, just the joy of recapturing some of those showmanship moments on the stage boosts the film. What’s more, despite the “it used to be about the music, man” conflicts within the band, there’s an amusing dynamic within the group, and the gags and sarcastic comments among them are endearing and deliver some genuine laughs.
But when the film is trying to sell the audience on the tragedy of a fatal illness, or mumbling through a barely-there story of immigrant family doubt and acceptance, or dragging the audience through the muck of yet another paint-by-number musician biography on the silver screen, it can’t help but exhaust you. Freddie Mercury’s heritage, his sexuality, his life and legacy and presence, are all more than enough to tell a story that does more than just hit the familiar notes; the frontman himself always did more than that.
Instead, Bohemian Rhapsody offers the viewer reheated band biopic leftovers, from a dish that’s capably made but overfamiliar, with little of the flair or distinction of its subject. If you just want to see Queen’s greatest musical hits done up with cinematic splendor, this is the movie for you. And if you want to see the band’s most iconic moments and inspirations dashed through with all the novelty of a rusty penny, all the better. And if you want the “greatest hits” of a Behind the Music-style narrative wrapped around Freddie Mercury’s shoulders like so many loud prints and epaulets, then you’ve come to the right film.
But if you want something that transcends genre, that elevates the form, and breaks with the standard playbook instead of deploying it with minimal passion, then just listen to Queen’s discography and leave this uninspired tribute to it in a musty old pub.
