It’s hard to cram a person’s entire life into a two hour movie. It’s especially even more difficult when that person is a household name. In Bohemian Rhapsody, the household name in question is Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. Queen is one of the biggest selling rock bands of all-time. The actual song “Bohemian Rhapsody” is known as a masterpiece in classic rock, while “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” are some of the most famous sports anthems of all-time. Those three songs are so incredibly well-known that the band has a huge legacy just from the popularity of those songs.
And keep in mind, they had a string of other well-known hits, ranging from dance anthems, karaoke go-to’s, and an album that doubled as a soundtrack to the movie Highlander. The band had a long journey, going from a progressive rock band with fantasy-inspired lyrics and a cult following, to national icons that sold out stadiums and had immense power over the crowd.
Mercury himself had so much going on that, in addition to just how popular his band was, he was a larger than life figure in his own right. His own journey can easily fill a two hour movie, just like the band’s story can easily fill a two hour movie without getting into Mercury’s personal drama. Unfortunately, Bohemian Rhapsody tries to cram a four hour movie into two, and in turn, shoots itself in the foot.
It’s by no means a bad movie. It’s just the fact that it has one glaring problem, and it’s that it feels incredibly rushed, and it occurs quite frequently. The film plays more like a greatest hit compilation of both Queen’s history and Freddie’s personal life. The film will stop every so often for an extended period of time, but for the most part, it’s constantly jumping from time period to time period, with a heavy reliance on montages. One minute, Queen’s a no-name band that’s playing small clubs, and then literally not even five minutes later, it’s over five years later and they’re already huge, and there’s already some fairly noticeable personality clashes occurring within the band. It’s a disjointed sort of feel, as we don’t get to experience the entire journey that triggers the shift in certain characters’ emotions, so certain scenes can feel jarring, especially as any pertinent information only gets covered for half a second in a montage, or not at all.
When the movie does try to take a moment to breathe when it comes to the band itself’s journey, even then it tends to stumble over itself. Everything just happens way too neat and tied up into a bow. Now of course, when it comes to biopics, some things need to be condensed for dramatic effect, so it’s bound to happen to some degree. However, a lot of major moments for the band (and at times, Mercury) seem to happen in one fleeting swoop that are way too condensed even for a normal biopic’s standards.
In the first few minutes, a Mercury-less Queen loses their original lead singer while performing in a pub. Mercury himself just happens to be at the pub, goes out to find the band a few minutes after the show, literally meeting his future wife for the first time on the way over, leaves her behind to look for the band, then manages to sing one line of the band’s music that instantly earns him a spot as their new singer. This all happens in the span of literally five minutes or so. It’s like an assembly line of events, with the next event occurring before we could soak in what we just witnessed in the previous moment fifteen seconds ago.
The film never truly ceases this frenzied style of transitions, but utilizes it more to cover the band’s overall story, as the movie is more about Mercury himself. And it’s a shame, seeing Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon all getting pushed to the sidelines, as they all contributed a lot more to the band than people realize. They wrote a fair amount of hit songs themselves and all played a part in the overall creative direction the plan took. When there is an extended focus on them, they’re inaccurately portrayed as a bit more villainous and antagonistic (which is especially odd considering May and Taylor both had a hand in the film’s production), constantly butting heads with Mercury and being more like obstacles than having a true hand in the creative process. The movie essentially created villains out of people who weren’t truly that way just for the sake of having villains.
While the film does have a slew of problems, it ultimately does enough to make up for its many missteps. When it comes to Mercury himself, beyond the clunky opening where he magically just happened to be in the right place at the right time, the film handles most of his personal battles quite well. When the movie decides it wants to actually focus on human emotion, it hits hard. There are plenty of tearjerkers when it comes to Mercury’s romantic life. His struggle with coming to terms with his sexual orientation are quite heartbreaking to watch, especially seeing how it affected his relationship with his wife Mary, as she was someone he still truly cared about. And when it came to moments such as recreating some of Queen’s biggest hits, and the joy that Mercury had when performing on stage, they felt very uplifting and like real crowd-pleasing moments.
While these are actual moments of competent storytelling, the main reason a lot of these scenes work so well - and the main reason this movie ultimately ends up being an enjoyable experience - is the performance of Rami Malek. This movie would not work at all without Malek’s excellent lead performance. For anyone who’s ever watched a video of Queen’s live performance, Malek truly nails it. Every little quirky mannerism that the actual Mercury had, Malek brought to his performance. And it didn’t feel like a robotic imitation. Malek clearly puts a lot of energy into bringing Mercury back to life for the big screen. He feels just as grandiose as Mercury was, captured all his flamboyant personality quirks, delivered his lines in almost the exact same way Mercury would. It’s truly fantastic work, and the makings of real talent to pull off without coming across as a cheap knockoff of the real thing. For all the movie’s faults, Malek ultimately manages to singlehandedly accomplish the movie’s main goal, and that is to make Freddie Mercury a protagonist with whom the audience can both connect and sympathize.
Bohemian Rhapsody tends to be a mess. It’s a movie that tries to combine two different stories that have so much rich material in them into a mere two hours, and ultimately glosses over so many moments that would have made for a much more fulfilling emotional journey. If one wanted to properly combine both the stories of Queen itself and the personal life of Freddie Mercury into one large story, it would have worked much better as a miniseries. And I do hope one day that someone decides to do just that so we get the full weight of the band’s journey. Yet, oddly enough, for a movie with so many issues, it does manage to do enough so that the positives outweigh the negatives, and that’s mainly thanks to Rami Malek’s commanding lead performance. When the movie decides to take a breather from its constant montages, Malek takes charge and gives us plenty of scenes that are full of rich emotional moments that makes up for its many pacing issues. We’re left wanting more - in both a good and a bad way - but at least what we’re given ends up being an enjoyable experience.
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