Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
…………………………………………………
Bohemian Rhapsody Movie Review
Bohemian Rhapsody is a 2018 music biopic directed by Bryan Singer and starring Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury. It’s one of the worst Best Picture nominees in recent history.
………………………………………………….
“Roger, there’s only room in this band for one hysterical queen“
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
For a movie that follows Mercury’s life and is a self-proclaimed biopic of a man, it fails in almost every single regard when it comes to portraying his life, especially his personal life. The movie is obviously a dream come true for Queen and Mercury fans, but I am not the biggest fan of their music so I did not fall prey to the film’s soundtrack. You can listen to their music on your own and the movie itself needs to give you more. And this one never gives you anything more than just a medley of their best numbers.
The acting is strong across the board. I liked all of the performances and I appreciated how almost everybody looked the part tremendously. Rami Malek is very good in the main role and he basically becomes Freddie, but I still wouldn’t call his performance Oscar-worthy because the role itself is weak and did not give him much material to work with. Freddie here is almost portrayed as a shallow caricature and the depth and personality were thoroughly lacking.
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
The soundtrack is great and, yes, they recreated the Live Aid performance in the third act superbly. It felt like a genuine concert come alive and it was epic, but then again it was overlong for an already long movie and I have already lost interest many minutes before that scene. The pacing is very weak and the movie is basically your typical by-the-number biopic which just goes through the motions.
And it treats all the other characters very badly with his boyfriend manager being horribly portrayed, his girlfriend being very typical as his only true friend and the other band members are all very underutilized to the point of becoming just shadows in a movie that should be about Queen as well as about Mercury.
But let’s talk about the biggest problem here and that is its homophobic intentions which are obvious for anyone smart enough to get them. Bohemian Rhapsody was literally made for all the homophobic fans of the band and this singer and it must be a dream come true for them, but to anyone outside that group it’s beyond egregious what they did here.
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
Their handling of homosexual characters is horrible as they are either portrayed as bad people or entirely underutilized as that waiter who needed much more screen time having in mind how important he apparently was to Freddie. The film entirely avoids the romances and sexual adventures in Freddie’s life and literally brushes them aside in favor of his music career. It doesn’t blatantly avoid it as this is the 2010s we’re talking about and they couldn’t do that, but it is still horrible how much they avoided that integral part of his life.
What is the worst offender is their message here which is obvious if you read between the lines. The movie basically tells us that it his “unmoral” life that led to his destruction and that if he had chosen to be with his girlfriend, he wouldn’t have died. That is absolutely horrible and simply hateful for anyone clever enough to understand its true intentions.
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
And it’s maybe even worse how they mishandled the AIDS issue and almost entirely brushed it aside when it was such an important part of his life. It’s thus truly one highly manipulative studio picture and it’s truly disturbing when you think about its enormous box office.
Bohemian Rhapsody is well shot, well scored and well acted. That’s pretty much it. The rest of the film is your run-of-the-mill biopic which just goes through the motions and basically focuses just on the music alone with no insight on Freddie’s personal life or his personality as the character ultimately was portrayed almost as a caricature. It’s an obvious big studio cash grab that unfortunately paid off and made enormous amounts of money and even got a Best Picture nomination, thus being one of the worst nominees of the decade. It’s a problematic, even egregious movie in how manipulatively homophobic it truly is in its intentions.
