I'm fan of Queen& Freddie himself, but the same time I graduated film school and I love cinema, that's why I also like to be as objective as possible in my reviews of movies. Here I will try to make my criticism honest.
Yes, sometimes professional film critics are deliberately malicious, and their opinions are detached from reality, but sometimes they are also right, and in the case of 'Bohemian Rhapsody', they are right.
First of all, the film distorts a lot of facts from Freddie and Queen's life, and if it were not significant events - I would not care at all, because I understand copywrite and legal issues, but these are important things and all of this should be done better. Fred's life was dramatic enough, if only the creators of the film really wanted to make an interesting movie, they would go even deeper into Mercury's childhood and the fact he&his family, escaped their own homeland, because of brutal revolution. This could have been the starting point / foundation for a deeper, better portrait of the Queen singer.
Unfortunately, there is no depth here, the worst part is that this film is schematic, completely flat, only glides over important topics, does not carry out any serious psychological analysis of such a fascinating, complicated character that Freddie was.
I don't accept excuses of many Queen fanatics , that "this is the story of the band and not Mercury himself". Because first, one does not exclude the other: it was possible to include deeper analysis / truth about Freddie and the band, and second: the band's history is not shown in some great way either. The best moment of a rather boring, long-lasting first half of the movie is the recording of '' Bohemian Rhapsody ''. The rest is a fast, also quite chaotic montage of musical scenes depicting, carelessly, Queen tours and writing of individual hits, and while I understand, that in a 2-hour movie it is not possible to show each creative process in the smallest detail, it was still possible to show it better from the pov of the characters - band members, thus also build better and deeper characters in this film.
The second half is better, I admit, both in terms of pace and in terms of writing/story, and the icing on the cake is the Live Aid concert. The performance, photography, camera work, acting of the main actor is at the highest level in this scene, unfortunately it is not enough to save this movie from failure.
Malek's acting, imo, certainly doesn't deserve an Oscar nomination. He tries his best with an empty and schematic screenplay, writers / director's mistakes are not his fault, true, but Oscar is an award for outstanding acting performances, which are not limited to robotic mannerism, it must be accompanied by the psychological, emotional depth of the portrayed character, and there is no such depth in this film, in this main character. The only really emotional scene that attempts to penetrate into Mercury's soul is the scene of conversation in the rain. It is here, that Malek's creation is the truest and the best.
But again : when we look at this role through the prism of the whole film, majority of Malek's work is the mentioned mechanical mannerism - perfectly recreated- but it is not enough to rate this role positively, let alone reward it with an Oscar nomination. Imitative mannerism, gestures, faces alone - it is only a skeleton, an acting sketch and not a full, beautiful, complex image, which should be any biography. There is simply no soul in this act, and it's just a shame, if you play a figure as extraordinary, colorful and complicated as Freddie Mercury.
In addition to the obvious mistakes of screenwriters and director, Malek himself (for me), didn't rise to the task. Sometimes he is just Mercury caricature and large, artificial teeth don't help to erase this impression, in fact, the opposite. The make-up department didn't do good job here, famous teeth of Queen frontman could have been done better, much more subtly, it would look less ridiculous. Returning to Rami Malek - he is still a young talent who - like any actor - needs more workshop and acting experience, plus really good material, to really shine. That is why I predict Rami Malek will not win an Oscar.
I still think that the great mistake of the Bohemian Rhapsody creators, was to part ways with Sacha Baron Cohen. When I found out that he had left Mercury's biography project, I thought it was a big mistake from film producers, because I was sure Cohen wanted to tell an uncompromising, interesting story, not forcedly smoothed and it seems, my intuition did not disappoint me at the time. Cohen, a remarkable & colorful character himself, would have fit in perfectly in this role. In addition, after watching the interview, in which Cohen explained why he finally left the movie and what vision of Mercury he had - I regret even more that it was not him, who played the Queen main singer. He wanted to portray Freddie as a complicated, controversial figure with a great appetite for life, but also a great artist, who mixed his big ego with great sensitivity and shyness - I have no doubt that it would be a great role. Now it's just a missed opportunity.
As a result, we got schematic, "polite" movie, oh, what an irony - because Freddie Mercury, as well as the entire Queen, were as original, unapologetic and creative as you could be and they deserve much better. Sorry, but real Queen fan, who wanted raw, real, complex, deep, uncompromising truth and story - just cannot like this movie. Mercury and all the Queen story has so much potential (wasted in this movie). I guess I'll just wait for another film, bold and great this time, I hope.
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