‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ or — Queen! The Advert? The Lie?!

(Contains spoilers and bad language)

I was never a big Queen fan. I didn’t hate them but outside of the ‘Flash Gordon’ soundtrack and Hammer to Fall I found them a bit silly. They were fun if you didn’t take them too seriously, which is just as well because ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (2018) is a fucking joke!

‘Bo Rhap’ is a movie that tells the “story” of Queen and their rock and roll lifestyle except without the rock and roll lifestyle as well as the fact that ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is not technically a movie; it’s a sanitised, Stalinist, revisionist hagiography about the husband of Anita Dobson… and it’s as fucking idiotic as that sounds. But this is what ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is. It’s just that “A Sanitised, Stalinist, Revisionist Hagiography About the Husband of Anita Dobson” isn’t as catchy a title.

Good grief, this might be the most badly written film I’ve ever encountered. The dialogue is physically painful to sit through as the entire history of Queen is reduced to nothing more than a series of conveniences, contrivances, lies, fawning innuendo and disingenuous bullshit and all delivered by nostril-brusingly on the nose dialogue. This is Queen’s greatest hits reduced to nothing but bullet-points linked by rabid insincerities. The result is unintentionally hilarious which is just as well as that was all that was keeping me watching this fucking mess.

I’m not going to bother explaining the story of Queen because the film certainly doesn’t. Instead what we get is a script with a template and structure that could’ve been applied to any Hollywood movie about any subject matter — all the prerequisite, clichéd dramatic beats etc — that just so happens to be about the rock band Queen. It feels like the Wikipedia page of the group was simply fed into a scriptwriting bot, and not a very good one at that, and this was the result. There is no drama here at all, in the slightest! Combine this with the laughably coy and insincere way it treats their excess (i.e. to completely ignore it) and there’s no rock and roll either, let alone drugs or sex (there are two sly jokes about Roger Taylor possibly liking sex and that’s it).

Indeed, for a movie about a rock and roll band this might be the dullest, most unrock and roll film ever made. Freddie’s crazy years are represented by one party he holds that’s so well behaved, so puritanical, so lacking in genuine hedonism you’d get more wild craziness if the film had been about Clannad or the Alan Parson’s Project recording Eye in The Sky. Instead there are a few cynically coy comments about possible naughty behaviour but ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ doesn’t have the balls to ever coming close to showing Queen in a bad light. From watching the film you’d think that Brian May had never even had a pint! You can feel the movie contorting itself into all sorts of laughable shapes to avoid even the merest hint of debauchery.

Then, after the party, we have a moment of shocking realisation — that Freddie has been partying so hard that it is now the morning. Or, depending on how sarky the waiter is, it could also be just half past midnight it’s been THAT crazy and out of control.

This unintentional comedy reaches almost inspired, Alan Partridge levels of hilarity when it comes to the climatic Live Aid concert. The film tells us that Queen are on the verge of breaking up (they weren’t) because Freddie wants to be the first member of Queen to record a solo album (he wasn’t. In fact he wasn’t even the second). Fortunately the band decide to play Live Aid but are now terrified because they haven’t played live together for years (they’d recorded ‘The Works’ the previous year and had toured it all over the world in one of the biggest stadium tours at that time so were the band best suited to take total control of the Live Aid stage) and that they might be shit so they remain unsure about performing.

And what is it that finally convinces them to go on stage? What is the primary dramatic reason for Queen, and the film, finding the strength to go on to achieve the greatest moment of their career? The answer? That they might be upstaged by Phil Collins and R.E.O. Speedwagon.

And THAT’S the fucking motivating factor of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’! That Queen might be overshadowed by Phil Collins and R.E.O. Speedwagon, a band I’d be shocked if anybody remembered in 1985 let alone in the 21st Century. Sweet fucking Christ.

Although, to be fair, I can’t remember the last time I’ve laughed so hard at, well… anything!

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is a travesty of a movie. It is appallingly written, contrived beyond belief, contains caricatures rather than characters and is so insincere it becomes legitimately untrustworthy. It’s boring, dull and in direct opposition to the energy, excess and charisma not only of Queen but of any rock band, ever.

Maybe ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ should’ve taken the title ‘Will We Will Rock You’ as that would’ve been more appropriate because the entire film is nothing more than the thudding beat of the banal and the obvious.