[troutman]

https://uproxx.com/movies/bohemian-rhapsody-review/

Bohemian Rhapsody feels like dirty pool. Either one of the next two things are true: Either the surviving members of Queen still resent the fact that so much of their legacy is wrapped up in Freddie Mercury that they had to make this revisionist history of a movie, or the surviving members are so cinematically tone deaf they inadvertently made a movie that sure comes off like that’s what they were trying to do.

Before we get too far, let’s get this out of the way: Rami Malek is really great as Freddie Mercury. He’s so great that he almost sells what this movie is trying to pawn off on us. I do wish he could have, somehow, been in a movie that was kinder to the legacy of Freddie Mercury – one the band didn’t control – but that’s not the way it went down. So what we get is Rami Malek performing his ass off as Freddie Mercury in what’s essentially a Brian May and Roger Taylor propaganda film.

Look, I get it, scripted films are not documentaries. And, sometimes, creative license has to be used to move a story forward. But I’ve never seen a film distort its facts in such a punitive way. It’s like the movie wants to punish Freddie Mercury.