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Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t a movie. It’s a regurgitation of Freddie Mercury’s Wikipedia page for a little over two hours. Oh, were you hoping to learn anything else about the other members of Queen? Too bad, so sad, as they’re regulated to Mercury’s merry band of sidekicks (despite whatever limp proclamations of “we are family” that come out of their mouths).
It’s tempting to question whether or not Bohemian Rhapsody is a parody of the popular musician biopic. So much of the film is presented in as sanded off, dulled, and literal a manner that you wonder just how this thing has transformed into a blockbuster. It’s certainly not the pedestrian director or eye-roll inducing script, but if it’s some of the editing choices, Rami Malek’s central performance, and the soundtrack then things start making sense.
This is a film that documents the rigors of touring by having Freddie Mercury say his goodbyes from the stage as neon letters of various international cities zoom past him. I cringed as that scene played out, and I cannot imagine how anyone looked at it and thought it passed muster. It isn’t just that, but a vague sense that his father’s replayed mantra is going nowhere by about it’s third utterance and a self-negation in Mercury’s own queerness. There’s joke a plenty about Mercury being a hysterical queen, but the main gay relationship that gets screen time is one that’s incredibly toxic and juxtaposed with the warmth and support of his heterosexual one. Gross.
So, leave it to Malek’s performance to provide any kind of effusive praise I can manage for this thing. It’d be too easy to write it off as simple mimicry aided by solid work from the makeup and costume departments, yet there’s several scenes where Malek is called to really act and invest a multitude of layers to what’s happening. Malek’s working in an artful manner in a film that’s merely happy to shallowly entertain and provide a reductive approximation of rock and roll’s greatest frontman. Just listen to Greatest Hits, Vols 1 and 2 while skimming the Wikipedia page for approximately the same level of enjoyment.
