Bohemian Rhapsody

Power Ballads, False Notes (Is This the Real Life/Is This Just Fantasy)
or
Mercury Rising (Buddy, You're a Boy/Make a Big Noise/Playing in the Street/Gonna Be a Big Man/Some Day...)

They've been working on the story of the pan-sexual rock band "Queen," which is now called Bohemian Rhapsody, for quite a long time now, starting with a treatment by the amazing Peter Morgan (who also wrote THE Queen—maybe that's why they changed the name) and somehow being pureed into the Hollywoodized fairy tale that the movie ultimately becomes—a cautionary tale of all the trouble you can get yourself into by being yourself, no matter how brilliant and talented you might be.

Harsh? Maybe. But, there are so many conveniently conventional falsehoods in the telling of the story that one wonders just what the agenda was here. Buttressed by scenes of Queen's appearance at Live-Aid—considered by many the greatest performance by a rock band seen by millions (and I've included it below because it IS amazing—I thought so when I saw it live oh-so-many years ago—but also to show some truth about just how good that band was/is), it tells, rather fictionally, how Farrokh Bulsara (played by a prosthetic-toothed Rami Malik) joined the rock band "Smile" and turned it into "Queen" and himself into Freddie Mercury, rock legend.

Not to disparage Malik—he does a damned good job in the part, despite being much too short and slight to play the part and, frankly, too odd looking, especially in the eyes, to really pull it off—and Bryan Singer's direction is competent, if a bit perfunctory for him (he was fired from the project and the reasons why are conflicting depending on who is asked and the film was completed by Dexter Fletcher*, who was attached to direct until Singer was hired) but, it's the story that's a let-down; it just didn't happen this way.

Really—does this look like Freddie Mercury to you?

Bohemian Rhapsody takes the easy (and dramatically quick) route out every time it comes to explaining any of the highlights in the Queen story, frequently portraying legend rather than fact in order to gin up conflict for a story of the price of fame and unconventionality that is...very conventional in terms of a cautionary Hollywood tale of getting everything you want "except *sob* happiness."

Bulsara did not just happen upon the band "Smile" on the very night their lead singer decided to quit for another band—he'd been following them for quite some time, was a fixture at their performances, and friends with the band-members, even with their turn-coat singer. In the film on the same night, he meets his "love of his life," Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) at the same venue during a chance meeting (the reality is it was anything but chance, she came into the band's circle when she was dating Brian May, but that is never mentioned). In the film, the fractures within Queen that lead to their break-up (which never happened) is blamed on Paul Prenter (Allen Leech), who, after being rejected by Feddie Mercury, makes himself useful as an assistant to the band, then just the lead singer, isolating him, driving a wedge between him and anyone Prenter sees as a threat, making him the "Iago" of the story. 

Prenter is finally let go when Mercury finds out that he's been scuttling any chance of the band reuniting for 1985's Live-Aid concert, necessitating an unhealthy Mercury to clean up his act and get his voice back, risking disaster at the world-broadcast concert; In real life, he didn't need to, as the band had been touring for a year (August 24, 1984 to May 15, 1985) in support of their album "The Works." Then, of course, there is the tragedy of Mercury being diagnosed with AIDS before the concert, making it more like a triumphant swan song (or it would have been, except Mercury was diagnosed in April 1987, two years after the concert—still, it is a tragedy).

They (the film-makers) get the music right—they bloody well better—but the story is all false notes and in the wrong order.

All of this is like making a film about The Beatles and blaming the break-up on Yoko. Sure, it's in the zeitgeist (however trumped up it is), but it ignores the creative differences, the money issues, and just the fact that The Beatles were too talented to stay "The Beatles" after living together in conditions of "display-case isolation" for years. It may be true, but is it entertaining...and fun? Better to make Yoko a shrew.

And that is a shame. Queen should have a celebratory movie. They pushed boundaries across the board in their art and their manner, creating complicated music with ingeniously elemental, contagious hooks—I can't walk along these days without the bass-line of "Another One Bites the Dust" throbbing in my head—and Mercury's pan-sexuality was a bridge, of sorts, to bringing gay matters out of the shadows and into the klieg lights where they belonged and fabulously so. Their concerts were also known for being giant jam sessions between audience and performers, with a rhapsodic call and response that caromed between the two, enervating both.

And their message said "We Will Rock You" while allowing the audience to rock themselves.

Thump-Thump-CLAP Thump-Thump-CLAP Thump-Thump-CLAP Thump-Thump-CLAP

The real Feddie Mercury-with his parents and with Mary Austin

* Fletcher is currently making a film about Elton John, called Rocketman. Oy.