Film Review - Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

There’s a moment in the first third of Bohemian Rhapsody, the new film that centres on Queen and its legendary frontman Freddie Mercury, where countless quotes and reviews pop-up across the screen to showcase reactions to the band’s seminal classic from back in the early 1980’s. Strewn across the screen in big bold typefaces, the words of music critics who at the time didn’t think the thunderbolts and fandangos cut the mustard, but who’s fanbase spoke in droves, making them one of the biggest-selling bands of all time. There’s something of asymmetry with the Bryan Singer-directed biopic that is hard to ignore, albeit slightly altered by the context of history: the fans will turn out in their droves but as tales of this ilk go, it’s not going to please everyone as it tells of the music giants rise, fall and rise again.

What Rhapsody lacks is a sense of vigour, of showmanship and energy, which are so synonymous with the band and their legendary performances across the years. You could feel every moment at one of their concerts, every bead of sweat, every slap of the bass, bang on the drums and the mesmeric vocals of Mercury and while the film does a decent enough job of recreating the legendary Live Aid from 1985, it struggles right from the off to keep any momentum. Much has been made of director Singer’s off-the-field antics that threatened to derail the film last year – and much more will be written in the future – but judging by the film itself, he wasn’t the right choice for the helmer’s chair.

DF-10193 – L-R: Ben Hardy (Roger Taylor), Gwilym Lee (Brian May), Joe Mazzello (John Deacon), and Rami Malek (Freddie Mercury) star in Twentieth Century Fox’s BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. Photo Credit: Alex Bailey.

Everything seems so flat and empty, never building up ahead of steam to gain any real momentum and by the midpoint you wonder whether Sacha Baron Cohen, who was set to play Mercury before “creative differences”, was right: at least with his reported version, we would have some semblance of something rather more fascinating – of Mercury and the band – rather than the flaccid, lacklustre story we have here. It’s so obsessed with ticking off every cliche in the book, it never stops to delve deeper which would have been most welcome.

Thank the good heavens, then, that the film is saved by Rami Malek who despite having to clutch on for dear life when everything around him is crumbling into the dark abyss, shines like a beacon of brilliance throughout. Fully embodying almost every facet of the legendary performance, Malek delivers one of the year’s most magnetic and superlative performances that allows him to ensconce himself so beautifully in the role. Whether or not the Mr Robot star went full method for the role is irrelevant, for it’s easy to see why those behind the scenes gravitated to him so much. If there’s a slight chink in his armour it’s seeing him have to lip-sync but such is his charisma and effervescence during such sequences, it’s impossible not to be transported to the front row to rock out.

There’s an inherent intensity to listening to witnessing Queen as a band when they are in their element: electric, dramatic and powerful, they were the epitome of the biggest of performers. Sadly, some of their greatest moments of the stage don’t make for a decent biopic and while the spotlight will firmly – and rightly – land on Malek’s staggering performance, Bohemian Rhapsody cares less about off-stage than it should, and misses the mark to truly rock us.