"Bohemian Rhapsody": Music-Soaked Story of Queen Crowns Star Rami Malek

Bohemian Rhapsody
directed by Bryan Singer (though he reportedly walked off before finishing)
Starring Rami Malek and … some other people

The song "Bohemian Rhapsody," originally released as a single in 1975 and rereleased 16 years later, made me love the British band Queen.

I loved the clear timbre of Freddy Mercury's voice and the compelling emotion it held in the early verses, telling the story of a condemned young man who must pay for a murder. I loved the song's many genre shifts, it's allusions to opera buffa (Ialian comic opera), early English musical theater as well as straight up rock in its scorching "So you think you can stone me and leave me to die ..." segment. The uniquely striated guitar chords and Brian May's screaming solos added grit. I loved that it had an absolutely nonsensical aspect to it -- which gives it more charm. Once you hear this six-minute gem, you can't forget it.

When this tune was first a hit, I was an impressionable teenager, listening to everything on pop and R&B radio. I was riveted by the tune, and it quickly became nearly every music fan's fun singalong. Some scorned it as trash or comic relief, but it entranced more than one generation of fans.

Certainly I had heard other pieces of Queen music, including crowd favorites "We Are the Champions" and "Another One Bites The Dust." But about the band itself, its roots, its influences, its raison d'etre, I knew very little. So I was really looking forward to the Bohemian Rhapsody film that debuted in theaters nationwide last Friday.

After seeing it, I can't say that I really know that much more about Queen as a band other than the facts that have long been public. There's a disturbingly shorthand, 20-20 hindsight, TV-movie-of-the-week treatment of many events in the band's formation and career that left me wanting more. How did the other three members first get together? What was their inspiration? How did the each develop their musical skills? Instead the plot tends to tick off narrative milestones without really making those moments come alive.

The most fleshed out portrait among those in Queen is that of the late Freddie Mercury, the band's dynamic and flamboyant lead singer. It seems the living members of the band, who approved this film, kept a tight rein on how their characters could be portrayed, while the screenwriters could run riot with the story of the one who can no longer speak up. Critics have lambasted the filmmakers for this, as well as for altering the chronology of events for dramatic effect. Indeed, by making it seem that Mercury was well aware of his AIDS diagnosis just before his appearance at the Live Aid concert, his performance of certain lyrics becomes that much more poignant. Reportedly, Mercury wasn't diagnosed until more than a year later.

Where the film absolutely wins is in the portrayal of Freddie Mercury by Rami Malek, which is nothing short of brilliant.

With a set of outsized teeth resembling Mercury's signature overbite, Malek struts, pouts, creates, loves, performs the band's signature songs and rivets our attention for most of the film. It's a bravura piece of work, considering he had to alter his voice, sing (or appear to sing), approximate Mercury's style, walk, and stance, and portray the singer's early struggle to define his sexuality. Malek, who has proven to be a capable actor, outdoes himself here, doing a stellar job of conveying a complicated man with a sensitive soul and a firm and well-warranted belief in his own talents as singer, songwriter and stage performer.

The other big win of this film is Queen's music itself, even recreating the band's iconic performance at Wembley Stadium during the global Live Aid Concert of 1985 nearly beat for beat.

The other actors in the film tend to fade into the background, though Gwilym Lee ably sports Brian May's cascade of curls and wrangles his guitar convincingly, and Lucy Boynton is sweet as Mary Austin, Mercury's one-time paramour and the inspiration for his song "Love of My Life." Mike Myers is nearly unrecognizable as a record executive who declares that "Bohemian Rhapsody" will flop; his casting is something of a stunt since Mike and fellow SNL alum Dana Carvey ably breathed new life into the track in their 1992 film Wayne's World.

Bohemian Rhapsody the movie will leave you with renewed appreciation for the song, the band that created it, the singer who fronted it, and again, Rami Malek's starmaking turn as Mercury. And that's not just radio gaga.

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