We begin with Freddy waking up in his London home, getting ready for the day while an audio montage from radio news plays. He steps out of his Rolls Royce and heads into a stadium. His band is announced and they just about take the stage for the Live Aid gig when we zoom back to the late '60s knowing that we'll end at Wembley. So it's a framed biopic of a rock star. It might make you cringe or relax and delight you depending on how it deals with the tale.
Note, I didn't say how it deals with the truth. Fiction rock bios that attempt the truth usually try shoving in a wedge of myth as well. So in addition to the crowded canvas of a timeline that leaves too little of the characters you can get a lot of hagiography (for which see Oliver Stone's The Doors or Alex Cox's execrable Sid and Nancy). But if you focus on the character and appropriate here and borrow there form the timeline in service of the character's story and you do it while remembering you are making a mainstream movie for the pleasure of a crowd you shouldn't go too far astray.
And the good news is that despite some howling anachronisms we really do emerge with a compelling story about an interesting person. A lot of this has to do with Ramy Malek, the intense protagonist of Robot Man, fitting into the wigs and prosthetic teeth of his subject with a clear skill at distracting us from them. He fills it up with high camp and the insecurities behind the camp adding tension to almost all the scenes he's in. It's this that brings to the level we want because it's nuanced and unsettling and, while we might want a rockstar in a movie to be an alphamonster, getting that depth from a handful of consistent performance tricks is pretty impressive. Also the rest of the band is well cast with actors who don't just look like their historical subjects (Gwilym Lee as Brian May is uncanny) but get enough filling out to let the drama mean something.
So, I'm talking about characters and drama rather than historical accuracy. That's because this film prefers the people to the timeline and less to exalt the rockstars than bring us closer to the exaltation through acquaintance with the daily void between peaks. It's not Ken Loach but it sure as hell isn't The Doors, either (Freddie had far more physical reason to go around catching sight of the grim reaper than the "torn" movie version of Jim Morrison).
Bohemian Rhapsody was the first song I heard by Queen. At the end of grade eight I stumbled on it on the local radio and was blown away, noting the back announced band name. And then it couldn't have been better as the first Countdown of the following year (I think it resumed in late January) lead with the video. I bought Night at the Opera a few months afterwards and was a confirmed fan. The music was strong and ranged from the thrilling gravity of Prophet's Song to the biting humour of Death on Two Legs. Everyone at school loved them too and between us we bought up the backlog which was all just as good. I went as far as Jazz but by then they'd worn off and had been eclipsed by punk. When I moved out of home I gave all the Queen albums to my delighted eldest brother who thought I was nuts to do so. I've replaced every single one since.
So, even if this movie had been a dud the attempt alone won me. The good thing is that it's much better. There are wincey "great moments in history" scenes but the worst of them is cleansed with genuine humour (and mercifully a lack of smarmy self-reflexivity, the characters themselves are allowed to be funny). If you like Queen there's plenty here to enjoy. Oddly enough if you only like the notion of rock music history rendered into fiction there's probably a little more. Also, perhaps more importantly, for such a dry-eyed movie goer I welled up more than once. Just don't expect history; there are documentaries for that sort of thing.
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