Bohemian Rhapsody - Film

TY BurlyBeaR as I saw this last Saturday but couldn't face starting yet another film thread - though I did think there would definitely be some interest, which isn't always the case.

It was fine and didn't drag for me despite being about 2 hours 15 long but I did think it was a very standard, big-budget, solidly-made British film. And yes, all the reviews I've read have commented on the sanitising of Freddie Mercury's private life but this was probably inevitable for financing and classification purposes.

I certainly didn't find it terrible; I enjoyed it. And of the 3 things I saw that day (the other 2 were plays), this was easily the most worthwhile.

Besides, First Man had good reviews yet I disliked it and found it really tedious - each to her/his own.

I looked a few facts up afterwards and was disappointed to read how much was misrepresented.

There are just too many scenes of them arguing how in the studio, with some dubious “songwriting sessions”.

I thought the performances were good in general particularly Malek, but the pacing was very strange. It’s almost instant that they’re suddenly on TOTP with a Top 5 hit and an offer to do a huge US tour within weeks of getting a record deal. I don’t really think it happened like that.

I’m all for a bit of artistic licence, but Freddie’s death is so recent and so ingrained in my memory of growing up, the fact that they had him announcing his illness to the band during the Live Aid rehearsals when he wasn’t even diagnosed until a couple of years later, well it put a dampener on Live Aid at the end. I did however see this on a Screen X projector where the concert and performance scenes were all projected in panoramic view onto the sides of the room, so the Live Aid scene at the end was quite spectacular as I felt like I was literally in the middle of it all. Recommended if anyone has the chance to get to one of those screens.

The stuff about the AIDS diagnosis coming after Live Aid as ellie1981 mentions above was pretty significant given that this news is put forward to be partly responsible for him reconciling the band for Live Aid. The whole feeling/poignancy of the performance would be different if he didn’t know he had the disease then.

And the suggested animosity about him working on solo projects when other members of the band were in fact doing that aswell. 

Jim Hutton met him in Heaven where Freddie tried to pick him up, he wasn’t a waiter at Freddie’s party. That never happened. 

Paul Prenter very much the villain of the piece, nothing said about the fact that he was in a sexual relationship with FM for years, all we saw was Freddie’s initial rejection followed by implied shenanigans with various other men. The tv interview he gave never happened, it was a press interview. And the fact that Prenter also had AIDS and died the same year as Freddie could have been mentioned at least in the concluding notes. 

Of course its not presented as a factual biography so maybe we’re just expected to roll with these things. I wouldn’t know about them if I hadn’t googled a bit. 

I did like the film and Rami Malek is great as Freddie but you can tell Brian May and Roger Taylor had a lot of creative control because they’re portrayed as wholesome which didn’t ring true.

No, they didn’t.
Different film!

Ok thats mad. Genuinely, I remember a point during that final Live Aid scene when the hairs on my neck and hair entirely stood on end. I thought it was just the overall sound mix multiplied by a change in the atmosphere but now you've said that I'm fairly sure it must have been as the vocals were switched to the the original Live Aid stem. 

Up until that point the vocal impersonation has seemed fine - rather good, even - but at that point I just went ‘oh’.

Freddie was just on a whole different level.

I stayed up until 2 am this morning watching Queen documentaries and now feel quite annoyed at the way they half-assed the story. Live Aid is not the triumphant end of the Queen or Freddie story - it’s the mid-point. The real story is so much more compelling and emotional - and so much more culturally significant - than just that Live Aid moment, amazing as the performance was.

I was 9 years old when Freddie died, and I remember well the tabloid coverage before and hearing he had passed - we were in the car, and it was announced on the radio, and Dad was startled enough that his foot came off the accelerator so we slowed down momentarily. I remember the tribute concert, and I remember the huge outpouring of love for him - even though he ‘was a bit funny’ (as my Dad said at the time) even though he’d died of the scary AIDS disease that everyone was panicking about, and even though he was not ‘an innocent victim’ of it, in the terms of certain people at the time. He helped to break that stigma just because people loved him and his music so much.

The whole film was Freddie’s vocals though wasnt it? That’s what I read. It was Freddie all all the way through apart from the bits where rehearsal was interspersed with dialogue and where Freddie sang Happy Birthday to himself (where they used an impersonator). Rami Malek sang nothing. He trained to replicate FM’s speaking voice but no singing.

I have seen it twice (not legally). It is a bit `paint by numbers` pop star biopic.

The band have nothing. They work hard. Become rich and famous. The band have arguments and split up. The star gets into drugs and partying. The star realises the error of his ways and gets back together with the band.

It does have two great funny lines which still make me laugh. I will not spoil it by repeating them. It is entertaining, funny and with some drama. Worth seeing imo. And is the number one movie in America this week.

Yes, the Mike Myers *nudge nudge wink wink* joke did not work at all. It felt like the film kinda paused for laughter that wasn't coming at that point.