Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Jack and I enjoyed this bio-pic about Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the band Queen, leading up to its 1985 Live Aid performance. The movie should have been shorter, and there are some glaring mistakes in the chronology--not that I would have known. What I did learn from watching the movie is that I'm a fan of the band Queen despite never having bought any of their albums—their songs are so good!

Rami Malek (I haven't seen any of his starring roles, but he had small parts in Night at the Museum movies in 2006, 2009, and 2014, Larry Crowne, The Master, and Ain't Them Bodies Saints) is pretty great as Mercury. Malek is of Egyptian background, and Mercury (birth name Farrokh Bulsara) was from Zanzibar, an island off the coast of what's now known as Tanzania. Almost all the music is pure Queen, though, at times, Malek's voice is mixed with Mercury's and that of singer Marc Martel (credited for additional vocals). Malek also had to learn to talk with the buck teeth prosthetic. I'm not familiar with the actors who play the other three members of Queen, though none is a novice: Gwilym Lee as Brian May, Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor, and Joseph Mazzello as John Deacon. Mazzello looked familiar to me, and research turned up his appearance as a kid in Jurassic Park (1993) (here's a photo) and as a young adult in The Social Network (another photo).

Supporting cast includes Lucy Boynton (after I called her luminous in Sing Street, she was in the ensemble of Murder on the Orient Express) as Mercury's friend Mary, Allen Leech (last blogged for The Imitation Game) as groupie Paul, and Mike Myers (most recently in these pages for a cameo in Inglourious Basterds, plus several listings for Razzie Awards) as the permed record producer with sunglasses. In Myers' Wayne's World movies, the Wayne and Garth characters banged their heads to Bohemian Rhapsody--Myers threatened to quit if the song wasn't included--and it helped reestablish Queen's popularity after Mercury's death in 1991. Now that you know about this cameo, pay attention to the dialogue in his scene.

Director Bryan Singer (last blogged for X-Men: Days of Future Passed) was fired two weeks before the end of production. Various reasons have been given: absences from the set? Health problems? Ill parents? He threw something at Malek? Singer was replaced by Dexter Fletcher (his fourth feature) but Singer has the Directors Guild credit for this movie. The screenplay is by Anthony McCarten (most recently wrote Darkest Hour) with the story by McCarten and Peter Morgan (last penned Hereafter).

Surviving Queen bandmates May and Taylor were creative consultants and former Queen manager Jim Beach was a producer. Perhaps their control had something to do with why Mercury's drug use, his promiscuity, and even his homosexuality were glossed over.

Mercury's flamboyant costumes are great fun and I suppose they're accurate. The wigs, however, are distracting. We're so used to the fabulous wig work in Saturday Night Live that anything less stands out.

The movie opens and closes with Queen's appearance at Live Aid. The 20 minute set was shot in its entirety, before everything else. There's a rumor that it will be released separately. Here's video of the original 1985 performance and an article about the re-creation. Imdb has pages and pages of trivia, some items of which are above. One of my favorites is that the filmmakers requested recordings of people singing along with Queen. They got thousands and mixed them all into the movie. There are goofs and spoilers on that site, too. Just follow the links.

As expected, there is no soundtrack composer. The soundtrack album is available to stream from this link and there are other songs listed on this page.

Though Rotten Tomatoes' critics are not rhapsodic, averaging 62%, its audiences are, coming in at 93, #2 at the box office its second weekend of release. We saw it in IMAX. The bad news is there were no closed captions available in that format. The good news is that the sound was great.