Bohemi­an Rhapsody

As much as tea and crum­pets or Buck­ing­ham Palace, the music of Queen is tied up in all notions of Britain’s col­lec­tive nos­tal­gia. It’s as if we all come out of the womb pre­pro­grammed to know the stomp-stomp-clap refrain of ​‘We Will Rock You’, or instinc­tive­ly recog­nise John Deacon’s bassline from ​‘Anoth­er One Bites the Dust’. Par­ents dust off their vinyl for their kids, cou­ples sling ​‘You’re My Best Friend’ on their wed­ding playlist as if it’s sec­ond-nature. So tied up the band are in our nation­al iden­ti­ty and unique pop cul­ture, any direc­tor was going to strug­gle to make a biopic which did jus­tice to their extra­or­di­nary lega­cy – in par­tic­u­lar, their one of a kind front­man, inim­itable trou­ba­dour Fred­die Mer­cury. Enter the worst man for the job: Bryan Singer.

With a trou­bled pro­duc­tion his­to­ry dat­ing back to 2010, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody was once set to be a very dif­fer­ent beast, with Sacha Baron Cohen orig­i­nal­ly lined up to play Mer­cury. After Cohen left the film in 2013 due to ​‘cre­ative dif­fer­ences’, he was replaced by Padding­ton Bear him­self, Ben Whishaw, with Sun­shine on Lei­th direc­tor Dex­ter Fletch­er attached. Even­tu­al­ly, by ear­ly 2016, Whishaw had been replaced by Rami Malek, and Fletch­er by accused sex­u­al preda­tor and X‑Men direc­tor Bryan Singer.

With heavy involve­ment from the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of Queen and friends of Mer­cury, a vision began to take shape – at least until Singer was fired from the project in Decem­ber 2017, and replaced by orig­i­nal direc­tor Dex­ter Fletch­er to com­plete the project. How­ev­er, it’s Singer’s name on the poster, and with him the blame must lie for this mis­judged attempt at hagiography.

The sto­ry opens on Mer­cury (Malek) awak­en­ing on the morn­ing of 13 July, 1985, prepar­ing for Queen’s icon­ic Live Aid per­for­mance. From there Singer rewinds 15 years to Queen’s incep­tion, with Fred­die meet­ing Bri­an May (Gwilym Lee) and Roger Tay­lor (Ben Hardy) and lat­er John Dea­con (Joseph Mazel­lo) as well as Mary Austin (Lucy Boyn­ton) who would become his clos­est friend. What fol­lows is a whis­tle-stop tour of Queen’s jour­ney from stu­dent band to sta­di­um fillers, cen­tred on Mercury’s mag­net­ic pres­ence and the life he led off-stage as well as on it.

For his part, Malek is per­haps the best ver­sion of Fred­die we could hope for, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly strut­ting his way around the stage and doing his best to cap­ture the charis­ma which has made Mer­cury such an endur­ing pop icon. Yet the pros­thet­ics used to repli­cate Mercury’s over­bite seem car­toon­ish, and in close-ups of Malek, you become acute­ly aware that he’s just…not Fred­die Mer­cury. No one can be. It feels like Malek’s throw­ing his all behind the approx­i­ma­tion, but that’s all it ever is – robust­ly con­firmed by the fact that all the per­for­mances in the film seem to have been over­dubbed with Mercury’s vocals (Malek has said it’s an amal­ga­ma­tion of Mer­cury and his own voice, but to the aver­age lis­ten­er, Fred­die is all you hear).

The rest of the band don’t fare much bet­ter. It’s wise to cen­tre Bohemi­an Rhap­sody as Mercury’s sto­ry, but we nev­er gain any sense of who Bri­an, Roger and John are – or even Mary Austin, Mercury’s for­mer fiancé turned life­long friend. These char­ac­ter shells appear as pure souls who try to save Fred­die from the unsavoury influ­ence of his né’er-do-well per­son­al man­ag­er Paul Prenter (Alleen Leech), who is square­ly posi­tioned as the source of all Mercury’s trou­bles. Sim­i­lar­ly, Jim Hut­ton (Aaron McClusker), who was Mercury’s part­ner for six years until his death in 1991, is lit­tle more than a footnote.

These fig­ures are all trapped in Mercury’s orbit, but we don’t gain much sense for how they shaped his life, or indeed how he shaped theirs. Oppor­tu­ni­ties to explore Mercury’s iden­ti­ty – in par­tic­u­lar, his rela­tion­ship with his Par­si Indi­an fam­i­ly – are missed, and even the atten­tion paid to his sex­u­al­i­ty feels cheap, with one scene con­trast­ing the record­ing of ​‘Anoth­er One Bites the Dust’ with Mer­cury vis­it­ing a gay club. In fact, the film seems to absolve Mer­cury of any per­son­al flaws or mis­takes, paint­ing him as a naïve vic­tim of his own suc­cess rather than a man with his own agency and desires. (Side­bar: Mike Myers turn­ing up to play North­ern record exec Ray Fos­ter – and crack­ing a Wayne’s World joke – is a hot con­tender for most toe-curl­ing cin­e­mat­ic moment of the year.)

Dis­tract­ing tech­ni­cal flour­ish­es such as blur­ry cam­eras and quick zooms take away from any poten­tial res­o­nance of the act­ing, and even Malek’s best attempts at emu­lat­ing Mer­cury dur­ing the per­for­mance scenes fall flat due to cheap CGI crowds and awk­ward quick cuts which take away from the mag­net­ism he’s try­ing to cre­ate in his wide-eyed show­man­ship. It doesn’t feel like the work of a sea­soned direc­tor (or two of them, in fact) but rather a gar­ish, gush­ing stu­dent project that’s got wild­ly out of hand.

It’s nowhere near as inter­est­ing or absorb­ing as its cen­tral fig­ure, and in gloss­ing over the ele­ments of Mercury’s iden­ti­ty and life which are so vital and impor­tant to many – his race, sex­u­al­i­ty, and the fact he was the first major rock star to die of AIDS – Bohemi­an Rhap­sody leaves a sour taste. This is a revi­sion­ist attempt at paint­ing Mer­cury in pri­ma­ry colours suit­able for audi­ences who’d rather just bop along to the Great­est Hits than think about the man who shared his gift with the world until it killed him, and Fred­die deserves so much more.