A chronicle of the years leading up to Queen's legendary appearance at the Live Aid (1985) concert.
Director: Bryan Singer
Stars: Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1727824/
Watched at my nearest theatre.
~35 songs in the Soundtracks. All 19 Queen songs are listed as Performed by Queen, not any of the film's cast. (4 more Queen songs are listed without performer.) I stayed to watch the music credits, and these on IMDb today look like what I saw.
Favorite inside joke: Mike Meyers plays record producer Ray Foster, who paid for recording A Night at the Opera, and refuses to release Bohemian Rhapsody as a single, instead wanting I'm in Love with My Car. He says: "Well, that's the kind of song teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to. 'Bohemian Rhapsody' will never be that song." The joke: MM and friends were definitely banging heads in a car to BR in Wayne's World ('92). No Way! Way!
GL, who plays Brian May (b. '47), reeeeeally had BM's facial mannerisms nailed. The script made BM seem like a saint.
One reviewer on Amazon complained that the story sanitized Freddie's life too much. It was sufficiently seedy for me. He also complained that we didn't get any complete songs until the end (the Live Aid reenactment). Well, this is not a video compilation nor a concert doc'y.
I managed to not get sentimental until the end, when I felt grief again at losing FM while watching that Live Aid material. (I get grief-y when I consume Gershwin's classical works too.)
No one is as dynamic a performer as FM (b. '46), and R.Malek is not as handsome nor as well-built as FM. His portrayal (the script) is of a very lonely soul in private, which made me sad. I do believe that RM vocalized some things himself, such as singing work in progress.
Although watching the actual Live Aid footage is a better performance, I liked the film's version a lot because of the reaction shots of the band, added for dramatic effect. (This was supposedly their first performance together in a few years, and FM had voice problems in rehearsal. Per IMDb trivia, they had just toured a couple of months earlier.) When I'd listened to the real sound recently, I did notice the audience singing along; that's enhanced in the film. It was great to watch this footage on a big screen with volume high.
I'm frustrated that Amazon has no listing for pre-orders of a DVD yet. I'm ready to watch it again.
distr. Fox, dir. Singer; 9
