He will ROCK you
Musical biopic of Queen and frontman Freddie Mercury a better-than-average rock film with a stellar lead performance
Bohemian Rhapsody
(out of 4) Starring Rami Malek, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello, Lucy Boynton, Aaron McCusker and Mike Myers. Written by Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan. Directed by Bryan Singer. Opens Friday at theatres everywhere. 135 minutes. PG PETER HOWELL Alittle high, a little low, Bohemian Rhap
sody may have hardcore fans of Queen and Freddie Mercury chanting, “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” But let’s not get too rock ’n’ roll righteous about these blokes. Here is a band and man who wanted to be taken seriously and even a tad pompously — but definitely not gravely, as Bryan Singer’s biopic makes entertainingly clear.
These are lads who dressed in drag for the video of “I Want to Break Free,” just for a laugh. Their concert showstopper was a feat of athletic yodelling by Mercu- ry, the greatest pop singer ever. (Yes, I said it.)
And that epic 1975 title tune, the creation of which enlivens the film? It contains absurd shout-outs to Galileo, Beelzebub and some clown named Scaramouche who does the fandango. A befuddled band member asks “Who’s Gallileo?” even as they record it.
When all was said and done, Queen just wanted to have fun. Which is why I’m inclined to cut much slack for Singer’s approach, which follows a Rock 101 storytelling template: Levis to leather pants, superstardom to squabbles,
leave-taking to Live Aid.
Much of the emphasis is on late frontman Mercury, played by a resplendent Rami Malek, fake buck teeth and all, to the mild detriment of his fellow band members: guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee), drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) and bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello).
Yet there’s one divine scene that shows how these “four misfits who don’t belong together,” to quote the screen Mercury, managed to rise above petty differences. It’s when Deacon unveils the irresistible disco bass riff to “Another One Bites the Dust,” and his bandmates immediately stop arguing and start grooving. It reminds me of a similar disco epiphany in The Full Monty.
Name me a rock film that isn’t mostly about the lead singer. (OK, I’ll grant you Help! and A Hard Day’s Night.) The fact remains that the chest-baring Mercury was the show pony of Queen and Malek is the proud stallion of this movie. Without Malek’s dynamic presence — his singing bolstered by dubs of the real Mercury and Canadian sound-alike Marc Martel — this would be a very pedestrian Rhapsody.
Mercury’s tragic death from AIDS in 1991 at age 45, long after the band’s 1970s-’80s heyday, is respectfully observed but not to the point of overwhelming the film’s basic feel-good vibe. Ditto for his sexual enthusiasms, which traversed from hetero to bisexual to gay over the course of his life’s journey. The two main loves of Freddie’s life, Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) and Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker), are given more than cameo status, enough to show how much they mattered to Mercury.
Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara, in Zanzibar, to conservative Zoroastrian parents who moved the family to India before immigrating to England, settling in London. When we first see Freddie in 1970, he’s unhappily toiling as a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport, the butt of jokes by his racist co-workers.
He gets relief at night by attending rock concerts — his parents don’t approve, of course — and destiny comes knocking when the lead singer of a pub rock band called Smile departs for groovier pastures and Freddie steps up to the mic as if he was born there.
Behind him are May and Taylor, who had studied at college to be an astrophysicist and den- tist, respectively, before rock ’n’ roll duty called. They’ll later be joined by Deacon to complete the classic Queen lineup.
These good ol’ blokes aren’t quite sure what they’ve gotten themselves into by allying with the flamboyant Mercury, who declares they need to change the band’s name to Queen because it’s an “outrageous” handle and “I can’t think of anyone more outrageous than me.”
The road to rock destiny is thus travelled, with Malek delivering a thrilling portrayal of Mercury that makes any quibbles about the rest of the film seem like whining about the popcorn being insufficiently buttered.
An amusing roadblock presents itself in the person of a fictional record company executive named Ray Foster, played by a nearly unrecognizable Mike Myers.
He declares that the unconventional six-minute length of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and its ballad/bombast/opera form make it “too bloody long” for radio play.
“No one is going to be headbanging in the car to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’!” he thunders, a dec- laration of wink-wink dumbness — that’s exactly what Myers’ Wayne Campbell and his slacker friends do in Wayne’s World.
It’s also what the ecstatic Wembley Stadium crowd does during Queen’s legendary Live Aid performance of 1985, which is lovingly recreated at the end of Bohemian Rhapsody, right down to the Pepsi cups arrayed just so on Freddie’s piano.
It seals the deal for a betterthan-average rock film with a stellar lead performance. And as for the rest? Doesn’t really matter to me, to me.