November 24th in Chicago. This was the second picture in the doubleheader.
Directed by Bryan Singer, the film tells the tale of the rise of Freddie Mercury and Queen through their performance at Live Aid in 1985. Let me start out by saying that Rami Malek was about as spot on as you can get as Mercury. In fact, the actors who portrayed the rest of the band, were dead ringers.
The story starts out with Farrokh Bulsara living with is family in London, working as a baggage handler at Heathrow and dreaming of better things. Freddie sees a band called Smile, consisting of Roger Taylor and Brian May, and decides to join the band after their lead singer quits. May and Taylor say sure why not and enlist John Deacon as the new bass player. The band takes off from there. Nice and easy.
This was an interesting take on the band but I always questioned why it needed to be made almost 20 years after Mercury's death. There are some factual inconsistencies for sure...
Which is too bad really because the facts are interesting enough where maybe so much poetic licensing wasn't needed. One of the main things that musical biopics have in common is that talent doesn't really matter. Attitude is all it takes. Attitude is all Freddie needed to convince May and Taylor to let him join the band. It was attitude that convinced the record company to get behind the "Bohemian Rhapsody" single.
Sure there's a montage of A Night at the Opera recording but no one wants to see the slow process of lyric writing and musical arrangements. The magic just happens.
The film received a 61% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Which seems about right to me. This was far from a great film but a good one.
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