Story of Freddie keeps on fighting to the end
Bohemian Rhapsody
Everyone loves Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody – with its staggering heft and operatic kitsch – as a go-to karaoke number, but it’s an overambitious one to try at the burnt-out end of the night when everyone’s too drunk or hoarse to carry the tune.
The story of Freddie Mercury and his band plays out a little like that. It strains for the top notes and vaguely growls the low. Still, there’s a solid middle range it belts out all right.
Long in production – it was announced back in 2010, when Sacha Baron Cohen was to star – the film has been fraught with on-set problems, after director Bryan Singer was fired late last year in the midst of renewed sexual assault allegations he vehemently denies. Dexter Fletcher finished it, but Singer retains the on-screen credit.
Watching Mercury in action, played in a ballsy but hit-and-miss performance by Mr Robot star Rami Malek, obviously needed to be the main draw here. He moves well, and sometimes looks a fair bit like Mercury in profile. But he’s a doll-like version of a megastar, and the voice never seems quite right: too affectedly plummy, for all the effort he’s put in.
Mercury’s louche, perspiring showmanship on stage is pretty well done, especially in the rousing, film-saving finale. When it comes to the singing, though, the film has a nervous habit of chopping up Malek’s performances, cutting to bandmates or the crowd. The whole point of Freddie Mercury was that you couldn’t take your eyes off him.
The script has plenty of drama to play with: the clashes with bandmates, Mercury’s hidden sexuality, his marriage to “love of his life” Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton, not given much) and eventual diagnosis with Aids. It keeps repeating a favourite mantra of not trying to be something you’re not, and in fairness it has heeded its own advice. For all the shortage of visual poetry or true inspiration, it’s unpretentious and crudely watchable as it ticks off the greatest hits. The recording session for Bohemian Rhapsody itself, for instance, was always going to be a must-have, with Freddie demanding Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) climb ever higher with that “Scaramouche!” “fandango!” falsetto.
Joe Mazzello has some good, sidelong moments as bass guitarist John Deacon, but the best of the whole quartet is Gwilym Lee, who has Brian May’s adenoidal manner and dogged work ethic down pat. “Any questions about the music?” he asks despairingly at an overcooked press conference, where the hungry hacks are only interested in Mercury’s sex life.
You’d hope this film, in 2018, could be a little franker on Mercury’s gay relationships than a 2010 stab with Cohen might have been. Then again, Cohen, a better physical match for Mercury, made Brüno, so who’s to say?
Even the goodish, semi-funny, or semi-moving scenes here have an issue: because of the sense of missed opportunity bedevilling the whole thing, they feel like sketches for great moments that might have been.
Only at Wembley, as the band blows everyone away for Live Aid, do we feel the infectious blast of the real Queen sorcery, and the camera locks itself on Malek, who gets to strut his stuff at long last.
The final hurrah for Mercury’s genius, this huge, hubristic spectacle lets you grant his troubled film a pass: at least it keeps on fighting to the end.