WON’T ROCK YOU
Manipulative Freddie Murcury/Queen biopic bites the dust on nearly every level
Eeesh. What a disaster. What a crushing, unmitigated, stunningly inept and astonishingly tone-deaf disaster.
After years of stops and starts, with reports of various high-profile actors, writers, producers and directors attached to and then drifting away from the project, the long-awaited, highly anticipated Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” finally arrives in theaters this weekend — and it’s difficult to imagine how any alternative-universe version could have possibly been worse than this rubbish.
Where to start? How about with poor Rami Malek (“Mr. Robot,” “Papillon”), the greatly gifted actor who is given zero chance to create a believable, in-depth portrayal of Mercury.
The script is deadly. And that’s just the start of our problems.
Yes, we know Freddie had that famously pronounced overbite, reportedly caused by four extra teeth in his upper jaw. But the prosthetics worn by Malek, and his unfortunate choice to make it seem as if the false teeth could spring loose at any minute, is a distraction throughout the film.
Far more troublesome: Malek and the actors portraying his bandmates lip-synching (quite unconvincingly) to Queen’s biggest hits, in the recording studio and onstage. The attempts to capture the creative process are beyond simplistic and corny.
Making matters worse, director Bryan Singer (who reportedly was