directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston
written by Pamela Ribon and Johnston, Moore, Jim Reardon and Josie Trinidad
As hard as it may be to believe, it's been six years since Walt Disney Animation Studios gobsmacked movie goers and video game nuts of all ages with Wreck-It-Ralph, a hilarious, surprisingly moving fable about a bad guy tired of his thankless job who yearns for greener pastures but ultimately learns to love not just who he is but what he has in life. What was even harder to believe for me was that after giving us this utterly charming, nostalgia-fueled confection, Disney pulled down its pants, squatted and took a giant, steaming dump on it with the message of its sequel.
Six years after the first movie, video game character Wreck-It-Ralph (John C. Reilly) is living in utter contentment. By day he works as the bad guy in the arcade game Fix-It-Felix, and by night he gets to hang out with his best friend, Vanellope Von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) star of the popular racing game Sugar Rush. Unlike Ralph, Vanellope has gotten bored with her life and wonders if there's more out there than just winning races and being queen of her realm all the time. As if in answer to her question, the arcade owner Litwak (Ed O'Neill) installs internet in the arcade, but the Surge Protector (Phil Johnston) declares the portal to the internet off-limits. When Ralph, wanting to make Vanellope happy, builds her a new, "bonus" track, Vanellope, about to win a race in the hands of gamer for the nth time, deviates from the track and actually fights the gamer, resulting in the steering wheel of the game breaking. When Litwak is unable to fix the machine and learns from an online search that a new part would cost more than the game even earns, he decides to pull the plug on it, rendering all of the Sugar Rush characters, including Vanellope, homeless. Wanting to make things right, Ralph decides to set off on a trip through the internet to find a new steering wheel and save Sugar Rush, and Vanellope joins him. They learn that they need money to get the part and in their attempt to make it, they enter a grungy, Grand Theft-Auto-inspired game called Slaughter Race in which they must steal the car of Shank (Gal Gadot) the game's leading antagonist. That doesn't pan out, but Vanellope finds herself drawn more and more to this strange new world, even as Ralph tries to raise the money needed to buy the steering wheel by becoming, of all things, an online video sensation through the prodding of head Buzztube algorithm Yesss (Taraji P. Henson). Soon, both Ralph and Vanellope will have to make some very uncomfortable choices.
The visual craft of this movie is just astonishing. Disney Animation is moving ever upwards and onward, even after having jettisoned its former shepherd John Lassetter on allegations of sexual impropriety, and they show, yet again, why they're at the top of the heap in terms of pure technical wizardry. The internet setting make a lot of online jokes possible, as well as a lot of cameos from other Disney properties including Star Wars (the Stormtroopers and C3PO have walk-ons) and Marvel (Groot and the late Stan Lee both make appearances, although the latter isn't a speaking role). It's pretty fun, if only for the visuals and Easter Eggs.
None of that really matters to me, though because the godawful writing just undermines it all.
This movie is thoroughly awful, but to go into why, I'll have to go into some major spoilers. Read on if you want to know more. If not, then you can end the review here.
1/10
(SPOILER ALERT)
(LAST CHANCE)
When the first movie came along, two other films had already taken a stab at telling a story of a bad guy who turned good (i.e. Megamind and Despicable Me) and so it needed a little something extra to distinguish itself, and apart from a plethora of delightful video game references, it managed to impart a charming message about making the most with what one has, even though it was delivered with all the subtlety of a hand grenade. Ralph's "Bad Guy Anonymous" credo was central to the movie's theme and featured in the movie's most touching moment: "I'm bad, and that's good. I'll never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."
The flip side of that surprisingly sweet message, however, was an entire community telling Ralph that he was wrong to dream about being a hero rather than a villain, from the entire supporting cast of the game in which he was the bad guy, to the other games he basically invaded, to the storytellers themselves. When Ralph wanted to improve his lot in life by stepping out of the (literal) box in which he had been confined for thirty years, he nearly destroyed his whole world. They even had a name for it: "Going Turbo." Yes, even the bad guy in the film was basically a cautionary tale as to what would happen if Ralph followed through on chasing his dream.
It seemed a pretty strange message for a Disney movie at the time. Don't chase your dreams? Make do with what you have? It seemed a bit out-of-character for the company as a whole, but the real surprise was how they actually managed to make that message work, largely by telling the audience, which consisted mainly of kids: it isn't all about you; sometimes there are people in your life who depend on you. In the end, Ralph learns to love his thankless job because he has a new friend, and because the people in his life have learned to appreciate him more.
And that's what makes the sequel, which basically throws that message out the window, utterly despicable.
Here, Vanellope, after six years of living the life she always wanted to live (a fact established firmly in the first movie) gets bored with her life and wants to head somewhere else, even though she's the lead character of her game (whose picture was even on the side of the machine, a crucial detail from the first film) and easily the most popular one. Sound familiar? She basically wants what Ralph wanted at the beginning of the first movie, except that unlike him, she's living the high life, without a care in the world and yet, unlike Ralph, the storytellers support her desire to "pursue her dream." So Ralph, after thirty years of being the most hated man in his corner of the world, is wrong to want more, but Vanellope, after a paltry six years of having everything she ever wanted, is absolutely right to want exactly the same thing as Ralph did? How does that make any sense at all within the logic of that world?
There's another, decidedly more sinister subtext when one puts the two movies together. Ralph is clearly a poor, working class schlub with ratty clothes, no shoes and poor personal hygiene as repeatedly established by references to his breath. He's a man of simple joys and yet the first movie chastises him for chasing glory and a better station in life. In contrast, Vanellope was programmed with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. She was created as royalty, and the hero of her own game, only to be cheated out of it by someone who jumped ship from his own game. And yet, for all of her privilege, she, according to this film, is entirely justified in her desire to slum it it in the hellish landscape of Slaughter Race just because she's bored. Call it a stretch, but I'd almost say that the movie is declaring that rich people should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, even if it means abandoning all personal responsibility, while us poor assholes had better just shut the fuck up and get back in line or there will be dire consequences. Take a look at what happens to Vanellope's game at the end of the movie; it may have been saved, but nobody's playing it, and it's become boring because the racers have all become nice to each other as a result of a barely-discussed subplot involving Fix-it-Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Sgt. Calhoun (Jane Lynch) adopting them all after Sugar Rush was unplugged and turning them into perfect children. Basically, without Vanellope, the game is screwed, even if it isn't explicitly stated, but that's okay, because Vanellope gets to live her dream with Shank and her gang.
And that's another thing; the supporting characters introduced here are the pits, from Gadot's hollow bad girl to Henson's one-note internet mogul. They pale in comparison to the liveliness that Felix and Calhoun brought to the screen in the first film.
Finally, the movie has the temerity to call Ralph clingy and toxic for basically echoing what the entire supporting cast of the first film was telling him. It's even more detestable considering that in the first film, none of the characters trying to talk Ralph out of his quest really gave a shit about him. They were all basically concerned with maintaining their comfortable little status quo. In the second film, in contrast, Ralph actually cares about Vanellope, and the movie is propelled by his efforts to actually help her, first by building her a new "bonus" track, and then by going into the internet to save her game, a game she ends up abandoning anyway. For all his dedication, he is branded as clingy, insecure, and toxic.
I'll tell you what's toxic: this movie. Sure, it's got amazing visuals and funny pop culture references (including a genuinely funny end-credits sequence which earns the film's sole point) but when all of this craftmanship is employed in service of such an awful story that spits in the face of what came before it, this deserves scorn rather than praise.
Now I know how haters of Star Wars: The Last Jedi feel.
Again: 1/10
Friday, November 30, 2018
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Spidey vs. Aquaman vs. Bumblebee: Cannibalistic Christmas at the Cinema
With the year over 80% over, a good chunk of the movies destined to make a killing at the box-office have already run their course and are now racking up Blu-Ray and streaming sales. Using normal math, one could figure that the time for blockbusters is done, and that the year is most likely to go out quietly.
In the United States and Canada, however the grosses of movies that open on or around Christmas Day, and the week that follows it, do not follow the rules of "normal" box-office math. As many box-office analysts are fond of saying, in that part of the world, during that brief period of time every day is Saturday, which, barring the opening day of an extremely front-loaded movie, is invariably the single most lucrative day of any the week for any given movie. Because of this unique time of the year, the impossible becomes possible, such as multiple blockbusters thriving side-by-side (e.g. Avatar co-existing with box-office smashes like Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks), films opening small managing to finish huge (e.g. The Greatest Showman opening to $8 million and going on to finish with $174 million). It's a completely different dynamic from that followed by the average summer blockbuster, which usually adhere to the following rules: 1) opening weekend is usually make-or-break, 2) any competition closer than two weeks away can seriously damage grosses and 3) every dollar earned past the first couple of weeks is a bonus. The pre-Christmas and Christmas day blockbuster, however, is a different animal.
The thing is, the dynamic usually works because at Christmastime, there's usually something for everyone. A movie like Sing can sell $250 million in tickets alongside a $500++ million juggernaut like Rogue One: A Star Wars story because while the latter is busy gobbling up dollars from the 18-to-25, mostly male demographic, the former is busy catering to families, who are out in droves thanks to holidays from school and work. Adults can goose up the grosses of awards-bait like Argo and The Revenant, and basically there's a good time to be had by all.
What makes this year different and worth writing about, in my opinion at least, is that unlike in the past, this Christmas will feature the most number of aspiring blockbusters competing for what is essentially the same patch of box-office real estate.
There are three big guy-centric movies that will compete for the big bucks at or around Christmas, the first being Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which, to be fair will be coming out almost two weeks before Christmas Day, around the same time of release of the Star Wars or Tolkien adaptation movies, but it is hitting theaters only one week before the other two aspiring blockbusters of the season, Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman and Paramount's Transformers spinoff Bumblebee. All three of them, clearly, hope to partake of that sweet, sweet holiday loot, and up until a month or so ago, a fourth movie with an almost identical target demographic, James Cameron's and Robert Rodriguez's manga adaptation Alita: Battle Angel was originally scheduled to open right alongside Aquaman and Bumblebee. Alita: Battle Angel has since moved to February of next year, but it has been replaced with a PG-13 re-release of Deadpool 2, which, while not expected to make serious money, being a re-release, could spoil things for somebody's blockbuster-in-waiting nonetheless. As it is, three brand new movies with considerable audience overlap are going to duke it out and put to the test, more than ever has been done before, just how much the marketplace can expand to accommodate multiple blockbusters.
Personally, as a lifelong fan of the Spider-Man character, I'm most pumped for Into the Spider-Verse, considering that, more than any of the other offerings it looks like something we've never seen before, with its universe crisscrossing plot and its unique and quite honestly eye-popping animation style. I'm rooting for it more than any of the others, and quite frankly, with the earliest release date and family appeal (being an animated film) I think it has the best shot of the three of coming out on top. If nothing else, by the time the melee starts, it will most likely have webbed up about a cool hundred million or so.
Of all the "18 to 25" movies coming out on the weekend before Christmas, Aquaman has the best chance of winning the weekend. Its closest competitor for the crown, the long-awaited Mary Poppins Returns, opens on a Wednesday and will have burned off considerable demand by the weekend. Besides, Disney is most likely playing the long game with that particular film, which will cater to a different demographic, while Aquaman, like any comic-book blockbuster barring Black Panther or Wonder Woman, in contrast, is likely to be frontloaded. Considering that Warner Bros./DC had Aquaman in the can when Justice League tanked a year ago, releasing it in December was arguably the best thing they could have done with it. Had it been released any sooner, it'd still carry the stink of JL's failure, while waiting too long to release it would cast serious doubt on WB's confidence in the film and might also put it in the path of other blockbusters-in-waiting like Captain Marvel. WB marketing got this just right; how much money the movie makes now is all up to...the movie.
For me, the one truly puzzling release of Christmas 2018 is the Transformers prequel (reboot?) Bumblebee, which, in my estimation at least, looks most likely to lose out, if indeed there will be a loser when the dust settles. The truth be told, the thought that this movie could get lost in a sea of blockbusters makes me a little sad, because in over eleven years and six movies, this film, if the trailer is any indication, marks the first time that the folks at Paramount are ditching Michael Bay's brain-dead approach to filmmaking and have elected to actually make a film with heart. Not only is this evident from the trailer which suggests an 80s-set, Iron Giant-inspired narrative, but also from the pedigree of the filmmakers, like Travis Knight, director of the Academy-Award nominated Kubo and the Two Strings, and the two up-and-coming female scriptwriters Christina Hodson and Kelly Fremon Craig, both firsts for the franchise. Oh, and the film also starts Academy Award nominee Hailee Steinfeld as the lead (though to be fair, Mark Wahlberg, lead of the last two Transformers films, also has an Oscar nod under his belt). As odd as this may sound, of all the 18-to-25-skewing movies coming out this December, this movie actually has the most pedigree, though the presence of former wrestler John Cena kind of evens that out a bit.
I'm glad Alita: Battle Angel, which to me looked like the most unique of the entire Christmas bunch, dodged the bullet of having to face off against so many big titles, but even without it in the mix I find myself genuinely curious to see how this box-office battle royale will ultimately play out.
In the United States and Canada, however the grosses of movies that open on or around Christmas Day, and the week that follows it, do not follow the rules of "normal" box-office math. As many box-office analysts are fond of saying, in that part of the world, during that brief period of time every day is Saturday, which, barring the opening day of an extremely front-loaded movie, is invariably the single most lucrative day of any the week for any given movie. Because of this unique time of the year, the impossible becomes possible, such as multiple blockbusters thriving side-by-side (e.g. Avatar co-existing with box-office smashes like Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks), films opening small managing to finish huge (e.g. The Greatest Showman opening to $8 million and going on to finish with $174 million). It's a completely different dynamic from that followed by the average summer blockbuster, which usually adhere to the following rules: 1) opening weekend is usually make-or-break, 2) any competition closer than two weeks away can seriously damage grosses and 3) every dollar earned past the first couple of weeks is a bonus. The pre-Christmas and Christmas day blockbuster, however, is a different animal.
The thing is, the dynamic usually works because at Christmastime, there's usually something for everyone. A movie like Sing can sell $250 million in tickets alongside a $500++ million juggernaut like Rogue One: A Star Wars story because while the latter is busy gobbling up dollars from the 18-to-25, mostly male demographic, the former is busy catering to families, who are out in droves thanks to holidays from school and work. Adults can goose up the grosses of awards-bait like Argo and The Revenant, and basically there's a good time to be had by all.
What makes this year different and worth writing about, in my opinion at least, is that unlike in the past, this Christmas will feature the most number of aspiring blockbusters competing for what is essentially the same patch of box-office real estate.
There are three big guy-centric movies that will compete for the big bucks at or around Christmas, the first being Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which, to be fair will be coming out almost two weeks before Christmas Day, around the same time of release of the Star Wars or Tolkien adaptation movies, but it is hitting theaters only one week before the other two aspiring blockbusters of the season, Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman and Paramount's Transformers spinoff Bumblebee. All three of them, clearly, hope to partake of that sweet, sweet holiday loot, and up until a month or so ago, a fourth movie with an almost identical target demographic, James Cameron's and Robert Rodriguez's manga adaptation Alita: Battle Angel was originally scheduled to open right alongside Aquaman and Bumblebee. Alita: Battle Angel has since moved to February of next year, but it has been replaced with a PG-13 re-release of Deadpool 2, which, while not expected to make serious money, being a re-release, could spoil things for somebody's blockbuster-in-waiting nonetheless. As it is, three brand new movies with considerable audience overlap are going to duke it out and put to the test, more than ever has been done before, just how much the marketplace can expand to accommodate multiple blockbusters.
Personally, as a lifelong fan of the Spider-Man character, I'm most pumped for Into the Spider-Verse, considering that, more than any of the other offerings it looks like something we've never seen before, with its universe crisscrossing plot and its unique and quite honestly eye-popping animation style. I'm rooting for it more than any of the others, and quite frankly, with the earliest release date and family appeal (being an animated film) I think it has the best shot of the three of coming out on top. If nothing else, by the time the melee starts, it will most likely have webbed up about a cool hundred million or so.
Of all the "18 to 25" movies coming out on the weekend before Christmas, Aquaman has the best chance of winning the weekend. Its closest competitor for the crown, the long-awaited Mary Poppins Returns, opens on a Wednesday and will have burned off considerable demand by the weekend. Besides, Disney is most likely playing the long game with that particular film, which will cater to a different demographic, while Aquaman, like any comic-book blockbuster barring Black Panther or Wonder Woman, in contrast, is likely to be frontloaded. Considering that Warner Bros./DC had Aquaman in the can when Justice League tanked a year ago, releasing it in December was arguably the best thing they could have done with it. Had it been released any sooner, it'd still carry the stink of JL's failure, while waiting too long to release it would cast serious doubt on WB's confidence in the film and might also put it in the path of other blockbusters-in-waiting like Captain Marvel. WB marketing got this just right; how much money the movie makes now is all up to...the movie.
For me, the one truly puzzling release of Christmas 2018 is the Transformers prequel (reboot?) Bumblebee, which, in my estimation at least, looks most likely to lose out, if indeed there will be a loser when the dust settles. The truth be told, the thought that this movie could get lost in a sea of blockbusters makes me a little sad, because in over eleven years and six movies, this film, if the trailer is any indication, marks the first time that the folks at Paramount are ditching Michael Bay's brain-dead approach to filmmaking and have elected to actually make a film with heart. Not only is this evident from the trailer which suggests an 80s-set, Iron Giant-inspired narrative, but also from the pedigree of the filmmakers, like Travis Knight, director of the Academy-Award nominated Kubo and the Two Strings, and the two up-and-coming female scriptwriters Christina Hodson and Kelly Fremon Craig, both firsts for the franchise. Oh, and the film also starts Academy Award nominee Hailee Steinfeld as the lead (though to be fair, Mark Wahlberg, lead of the last two Transformers films, also has an Oscar nod under his belt). As odd as this may sound, of all the 18-to-25-skewing movies coming out this December, this movie actually has the most pedigree, though the presence of former wrestler John Cena kind of evens that out a bit.
I'm glad Alita: Battle Angel, which to me looked like the most unique of the entire Christmas bunch, dodged the bullet of having to face off against so many big titles, but even without it in the mix I find myself genuinely curious to see how this box-office battle royale will ultimately play out.
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Hail to the Queen! A Review of Bohemian Rhapsody
directed by Bryan Singer
written by Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan
The long-gestating Freddie Mercury biopic finally comes to the big screen, with American actor Rami Malek delivering a stunning performance as one of the most iconic rock stars of all time.
Bohemian Rhapsody, which tells, very loosely, the story of the rock band Queen from its inception to its legendary performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium, actually plays pretty much by the numbers. It starts with their humble beginnings; Freddie Mercury, aka Farokkh Bulsara (Malek) the humble immigrant from Zanzibar (now Tanzania) works at Heathrow airport unpacking luggage from airplanes, but already dreams of being a performer. His dream gets a boost when he joins the college campus band Smile consisting of Brian May (Gwilym Lee) and Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), whose vocalist has just abandoned them. They are joined by bassist John Deacon (Joe Mazzello), and the band Queen is born. Also joining Freddie in his meteoric rise to the top is Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) a saleslady with whom Freddie strikes up a romance, and who later proves to be the single most important person in his life. As the band goes from strength to strength and rockets to superstardom with their iconoclastic approach to making music, fame and all its trappings start to get to them, and to Freddie in particular as he struggles with his sexuality, and threaten to tear them all apart.
Much has been written about how this film handled its controversial subject matter, Freddie Mercury, with kid gloves and to be fair, one does get the sense that the narrative has been sanitized a bit. I can't say I'm too surprised given how closely the surviving band members supervised production. One scene in particular, in which the three other band members leave Freddie's party with their wives when things start to get a bit wild, had me rolling my eyes a little bit, not because I don't think it ever happened, but because the suggestion that Mercury was the only wild child of the bunch seemed patently absurd. Still, this movie was about Freddie first and foremost, and I can't imagine anyone getting in line to see a movie about Roger Taylor's marital travails. Ultimately, though, this kind of storytelling choice contributes to the impression that the film went a bit easy on the band.
What I find grossly unfair, though, is how some critics seem sorely disappointed that the film declined to portray Mercury's sexual misadventures explicitly and chose, instead to leave most of the debauchery to the imagination. It's even resulted in shock-value comedian Sacha Baron Cohen getting undeserved airtime for the assertion that his portrayal would have been "outrageous" in terms of Mercury's homosexuality, which tells me that his enthusiasm for the project was less about honoring Mercury's music and more about finding yet another excuse to show off his pale ass again, and quite frankly, thanks to Borat I've seen enough of naked Sacha Baron Cohen to last me ten lifetimes.
The thing is, the movie is aptly called "Bohemian Rhapsody" rather than "Freddie" or even "Queen" because it's less about Freddie or the band and their quirks and is more about how their music, more than the diva tantrums or the drugs or the orgies, was what defined them. We got to glimpse the painstaking gestation of not only "Bohemian Rhapsody" but also Queen's other celebrated anthem, "We Will Rock You" and even the off-beat "Another One Bites the Dust" which was apparently born during an argument between the band members. Sure, we basically saw what the remainder of the band wanted us to see, but when the climax of the movie is a gorgeously-recreated version of the 1985 Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium, it's hard to begrudge them their vision, even if it doesn't feel like an entirely honest one.
It's also hard to dislike a film with a lead performance as mesmerizing as that of Rami Malek, who, as even the most curmudgeonly of critics has acknowledged, carries the entire movie. I don't pretend to have known Freddie Mercury in any capacity, but there was something utterly captivating about seeing Malek doing his level best to recapture Mercury's boundless energy as he ad-lib-pranced across the stage, and thus creating an energy of his own. Baron Cohen would not have pulled this off, not in his wildest dreams. While I'll admit that Malek's main job was basically to pantomime Mercury belting out his greatest hits, it simply wouldn't have worked if he hadn't exuded charisma in virtually every moment that the camera is on him, even through those massive prosthetic teeth, and even in Freddie's darkest moments of self-doubt and self-loathing. One thing that did seem off to me, though, was that Malek looked a bit skinnier than Freddie but that was a minor quibble.
It helps that capable actors are cast as the rest of the band, though really, they barely make an impression with the way they're written. It was weirdly entertaining, though to see the kid from Jurassic Park play Queen's bassist John Deacon. Everyone else is in the cast is just okay, though Allen Leech as the villainous manager Paul Prenter played the character a bit too broad; I half-expected him to twirl his mustache at one point. One cameo that particularly stood out, though, was Mike Myers as Ray Foster, the small-minded (and fictional) record executive at EMI who refused to release Bohemian Rhapsody as the band's carrier single. As anyone over forty knows, Myers revitalized the song in America when he featured it in the opening scene of his popular film Wayne's World back in 1992. Having him assert that no kids would ever play that song in their cars and bang their heads to it was a pretty gratifying payoff.
it's a shame Bryan Singer couldn't keep it together to finish this movie, because as the Wembley Studio sequence he shot shows, he's still got the touch that mades his X-Men movies eminently watchable.
So yes, the movie has its fair share of problems, most of them with the writing, but a magnetic performance by its lead and those infectious songs are enough to pretty much carry the day, just as they were in The Greatest Showman.
7/10
written by Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan
The long-gestating Freddie Mercury biopic finally comes to the big screen, with American actor Rami Malek delivering a stunning performance as one of the most iconic rock stars of all time.
Bohemian Rhapsody, which tells, very loosely, the story of the rock band Queen from its inception to its legendary performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium, actually plays pretty much by the numbers. It starts with their humble beginnings; Freddie Mercury, aka Farokkh Bulsara (Malek) the humble immigrant from Zanzibar (now Tanzania) works at Heathrow airport unpacking luggage from airplanes, but already dreams of being a performer. His dream gets a boost when he joins the college campus band Smile consisting of Brian May (Gwilym Lee) and Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), whose vocalist has just abandoned them. They are joined by bassist John Deacon (Joe Mazzello), and the band Queen is born. Also joining Freddie in his meteoric rise to the top is Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) a saleslady with whom Freddie strikes up a romance, and who later proves to be the single most important person in his life. As the band goes from strength to strength and rockets to superstardom with their iconoclastic approach to making music, fame and all its trappings start to get to them, and to Freddie in particular as he struggles with his sexuality, and threaten to tear them all apart.
Much has been written about how this film handled its controversial subject matter, Freddie Mercury, with kid gloves and to be fair, one does get the sense that the narrative has been sanitized a bit. I can't say I'm too surprised given how closely the surviving band members supervised production. One scene in particular, in which the three other band members leave Freddie's party with their wives when things start to get a bit wild, had me rolling my eyes a little bit, not because I don't think it ever happened, but because the suggestion that Mercury was the only wild child of the bunch seemed patently absurd. Still, this movie was about Freddie first and foremost, and I can't imagine anyone getting in line to see a movie about Roger Taylor's marital travails. Ultimately, though, this kind of storytelling choice contributes to the impression that the film went a bit easy on the band.
What I find grossly unfair, though, is how some critics seem sorely disappointed that the film declined to portray Mercury's sexual misadventures explicitly and chose, instead to leave most of the debauchery to the imagination. It's even resulted in shock-value comedian Sacha Baron Cohen getting undeserved airtime for the assertion that his portrayal would have been "outrageous" in terms of Mercury's homosexuality, which tells me that his enthusiasm for the project was less about honoring Mercury's music and more about finding yet another excuse to show off his pale ass again, and quite frankly, thanks to Borat I've seen enough of naked Sacha Baron Cohen to last me ten lifetimes.
The thing is, the movie is aptly called "Bohemian Rhapsody" rather than "Freddie" or even "Queen" because it's less about Freddie or the band and their quirks and is more about how their music, more than the diva tantrums or the drugs or the orgies, was what defined them. We got to glimpse the painstaking gestation of not only "Bohemian Rhapsody" but also Queen's other celebrated anthem, "We Will Rock You" and even the off-beat "Another One Bites the Dust" which was apparently born during an argument between the band members. Sure, we basically saw what the remainder of the band wanted us to see, but when the climax of the movie is a gorgeously-recreated version of the 1985 Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium, it's hard to begrudge them their vision, even if it doesn't feel like an entirely honest one.
It's also hard to dislike a film with a lead performance as mesmerizing as that of Rami Malek, who, as even the most curmudgeonly of critics has acknowledged, carries the entire movie. I don't pretend to have known Freddie Mercury in any capacity, but there was something utterly captivating about seeing Malek doing his level best to recapture Mercury's boundless energy as he ad-lib-pranced across the stage, and thus creating an energy of his own. Baron Cohen would not have pulled this off, not in his wildest dreams. While I'll admit that Malek's main job was basically to pantomime Mercury belting out his greatest hits, it simply wouldn't have worked if he hadn't exuded charisma in virtually every moment that the camera is on him, even through those massive prosthetic teeth, and even in Freddie's darkest moments of self-doubt and self-loathing. One thing that did seem off to me, though, was that Malek looked a bit skinnier than Freddie but that was a minor quibble.
It helps that capable actors are cast as the rest of the band, though really, they barely make an impression with the way they're written. It was weirdly entertaining, though to see the kid from Jurassic Park play Queen's bassist John Deacon. Everyone else is in the cast is just okay, though Allen Leech as the villainous manager Paul Prenter played the character a bit too broad; I half-expected him to twirl his mustache at one point. One cameo that particularly stood out, though, was Mike Myers as Ray Foster, the small-minded (and fictional) record executive at EMI who refused to release Bohemian Rhapsody as the band's carrier single. As anyone over forty knows, Myers revitalized the song in America when he featured it in the opening scene of his popular film Wayne's World back in 1992. Having him assert that no kids would ever play that song in their cars and bang their heads to it was a pretty gratifying payoff.
it's a shame Bryan Singer couldn't keep it together to finish this movie, because as the Wembley Studio sequence he shot shows, he's still got the touch that mades his X-Men movies eminently watchable.
So yes, the movie has its fair share of problems, most of them with the writing, but a magnetic performance by its lead and those infectious songs are enough to pretty much carry the day, just as they were in The Greatest Showman.
7/10
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