Of all the spandex-clad, long-haired and leather-sporting musical acts of the 1980s music scene, the one that has perhaps dug its nails deepest into the vinyl of history is Queen. Among the highest-selling musical acts of all time, the band has sold 129.1 million records and performed for some of the largest crowds in concert history. Their name is synonymous with catchy and soulful rock-pop tunes that most people know without even being familiar with the band itself.
My generation, unfortunately, didn’t get to share the hype. For me, the 1980s is home to some of the most homogenous, overrated and nostalgia-tinted sounds the industry has to offer, but there were always two exceptions—Michael Jackson and Queen.
Even Queen, though, was spoiled for me by the bad timing of my birth. By the time I came around in 1997, all of their best hits had been put into the meat-grinder of capitalism, stuffed into television commercials and played incessantly often on the radio. I was fed a summed-up and saturated version of Queen’s original magic, and as a result, when I hear We Will Rock You or We Are the Champions, I only hear whatever product that music is being used for.
For this reason, when I saw the trailer for the band’s first biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, my ears perked up. It felt like I might actually get to see why the world was so wild about Queen originally, and the movie more or less delivers on this promise.
With Rami Malek cast as lead singer and main subject of the film, Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody follows Mercury from his humble beginnings with the band to their historic performance at the 1985 Live Aid benefit concert. From the long hair and patterned spandex to the mustache and wife beater, the film covers just about every angle of the band’s metamorphosis in a musically and visually enjoyable way.
Almost all the music in the film is dubbed with Mercury’s original vocals rather than covers, which may be a turnoff to some, but, unless you can show me a perfect vocal impersonator and lookalike of Freddie Mercury, I don’t have a problem with it. This approach is also a strong one because most people know a Queen song when they hear it, allowing the viewer to travel song-by-song through Queen’s career, each song an exciting overture to the next chapter of the movie’s plot.
Even with Queen, though, the formula of the biopic comes with hang-ups that no movie in the genre has been able to shake. When it comes to the story’s debatable accuracy, the viewer is at the mercy of the filmmakers to be honest about the film’s true story. This is a difficult position when Mercury goes from rags to riches at a predictable and hurried pace, and the actual chronology of Queen’s discography is compromised enough times to be noticeable. And, though this original music is good, it sometimes feels like an attempt to cloud some of these underlying plot weaknesses.
Does Bohemian Rhapsody match the epic heights that it could, and that are typically associated with the rock opera superstars on which it’s based? No. But it is an enjoyable and engaging look at the band’s most famous moments, and that was enough for me. I left the theater feeling closer to Queen as a band and cultural force, and whether or not you’re a fan, you’ll probably feel the same way.
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