4.5 Stars
Bohemian Rhapsody is the movie based on the songs and story of the British rock band Queen that was formed in 1970. Members Brian May and Roger Taylor were both members of a group known as Smile, of which Freddie Mercury was a fan. Mercury encouraged the group to experiment with more elaborate stage and recording techniques and eventually joined the group as their lead singer. Mercury was also responsible for renaming the group Queen.
As their popularity grew, they gained the interest of a record label. They were asked what makes Queen different than any other group. Their response was that they are a group of misfits playing to the misfits who don't feel like they belong. They released their first album in 1973 with songs like Keep Yourself Alive, Great King Rat and Doing All Right. It was in 1975 for their album A Night at the Opera where arguably their most famous song was unleashed on the world. In spite of their early success and critical acclaim, they wanted to branch out, experiment, give the world something they've never seen or heard before. But the band struggled to convince Ray Foster (Mike Myers), an EMI record executive, that their new music would sell. While Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) explained Bohemian Rhapsody, Foster commented about the song "going on forever. Six bloody minutes." Mercury quips back, "I pity your wife if you think six minutes is forever." As the song is conceptualized, recorded and played in the film, a barrage of critiques fly across the screen. The fans, however, embraced it and Rhapsody spent nine weeks at the top of the UK Charts.
Malek got his start in film with the role of Pharaoh in the Night at the Museum Trilogy. He is most currently known for his role in the USA TV series Mr. Robot. After just seeing the film, I don't know that there is another possibility of someone playing the iconic role of Freddy Mercury.
Bohemian Rhapsody covered their early days of Mercury going out to dive bars regularly to watch his favorite band Smile perform to Mercury's fortuitous timing in joining the band to their unique, cutting-edge, never heard before style of songs like We Will Rock You and Bohemian Rhapsody to the press's fascination with Mercury's personal relationship preferences off stage. The film kept a good balance of tracking the band's progression and Mercury's personal life and how the two affected each other, both in positive and in negative ways.
If you've read any of my previous entries when dealing with a movie that is "based" on something historical, while not claiming to be an accurate documentary, I choose not to do any research ahead of time because I don't want to sit in the theatre and nit-pick every artistic choice the filmmakers made to produce the movie. Instead, I just want to take it for what it is: entertainment based on fact. And I find Queen to be one of the most entertaining musical groups in history. One of my all-time favorite songs is Somebody to Love. To my delight, the film opens with my favorite song.
Like any fan of Queen, either of their entire story and repertoire or of just their few more well-known hits, I was excited to see Bohemian Rhapsody and just prayed they would do it justice. But, as the preview promises, they far exceeded doing it justice and incredibly captured what no other band in history could even come close to duplicating. I'm gave Bohemian Rhapsody a 4.5 Star Prediction and I'm going to stick with a 4.5 Star Rating. It was entertaining, emotional, exciting, tragic and beautiful, just like their music. Malek was genius in his portrayal of Mercury in a way that few are able to achieve. Immediately, only a handful of actors come to mind who accomplished the feat: Tom Hanks' role of Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks and Daniel Day Lewis who brought President Abraham Lincoln to life in Lincoln. These few talented actors were able to so convincingly embody their character that I did not see the actor on the screen, just the person they were playing.
I only had a couple minor critiques of the film. While Mercury is the most famous of the group, the film does a great job at showing how he alone is not Queen and he did not succeed on his own, nor could the band survive without him. I would like to have seen a little more of the personal lives of bass player John "Deaky" Deacon (Joseph Mazzello), drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) and lead guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee). I didn't care for the quotes of criticisms of Bohemian Rhapsody flying around the screen while the song was being performed. I felt they could have addressed that in a better way. And there was a musical number that had some weird 70's cheesy graphics that momentarily took me out of the film.
Other than that, Bohemian Rhapsody was absolutely brilliant and director Bryan Singer hit another masterpiece out of the park. Most of the shots were so well done it was impossible to tell what was new footage to replicate the historical events, what was created by CGI and what was used from the archives and cleaned up to use in this film. I got goose bumps about half a dozen times and welled up a few. While Singer did a great job of moving the story along and not having any lagging moments, there were a few scenes I felt they could have spent some more time exploring when it came to the other members of the band, the creation of songs, the American tour. It was hard to believe the movie was 2 hours and 14 minutes long as I could have easily sat through another 45 minutes and been completely entertained and more than satisfied. In retrospect, Singer did a wonderful job cramming as much as he did in that time frame without making it feel too crammed.
At the end of the movie, we see the actual band perform as the credits begin to scroll and it really takes you a minute to realize, this is the real band and not the actors we just saw for the last two plus hours. The casting, the performances, the mannerisms, the locations, the props, everything was so completely on point, do not be surprised if Bohemian Rhapsody gets more than just a few nominations in a couple months when the Oscars are announced. This is one I'll probably see again in the theatres and will certainly own in my personal collection. So, what movie will be on my mind next? We shall see.
I only had a couple minor critiques of the film. While Mercury is the most famous of the group, the film does a great job at showing how he alone is not Queen and he did not succeed on his own, nor could the band survive without him. I would like to have seen a little more of the personal lives of bass player John "Deaky" Deacon (Joseph Mazzello), drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) and lead guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee). I didn't care for the quotes of criticisms of Bohemian Rhapsody flying around the screen while the song was being performed. I felt they could have addressed that in a better way. And there was a musical number that had some weird 70's cheesy graphics that momentarily took me out of the film.
Other than that, Bohemian Rhapsody was absolutely brilliant and director Bryan Singer hit another masterpiece out of the park. Most of the shots were so well done it was impossible to tell what was new footage to replicate the historical events, what was created by CGI and what was used from the archives and cleaned up to use in this film. I got goose bumps about half a dozen times and welled up a few. While Singer did a great job of moving the story along and not having any lagging moments, there were a few scenes I felt they could have spent some more time exploring when it came to the other members of the band, the creation of songs, the American tour. It was hard to believe the movie was 2 hours and 14 minutes long as I could have easily sat through another 45 minutes and been completely entertained and more than satisfied. In retrospect, Singer did a wonderful job cramming as much as he did in that time frame without making it feel too crammed.
At the end of the movie, we see the actual band perform as the credits begin to scroll and it really takes you a minute to realize, this is the real band and not the actors we just saw for the last two plus hours. The casting, the performances, the mannerisms, the locations, the props, everything was so completely on point, do not be surprised if Bohemian Rhapsody gets more than just a few nominations in a couple months when the Oscars are announced. This is one I'll probably see again in the theatres and will certainly own in my personal collection. So, what movie will be on my mind next? We shall see.
