In trying to tell Mercury’s queer story through his straight bandmates’ eyes, the new Queen biopic ends up saying almost nothing at all.

| Apr 5, 2022

Like many biopics, it's a bit glossy when it comes to the darker moments in (Freddie Mercury's) life. but the affection for the music and the great man is absolutely there..

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 14, 2022

The film ends on a musical high, accurately capturing the essence of the band's energy but, despite Malek's best efforts, fails to capture the elusiveness of Freddie Mercury.

| Feb 29, 2020

...the karaoke idea does not work in a tragic biopic, even if it sets out to celebrate the life and music of the rock star Freddie Mercury.

| Jul 29, 2019

Bryan Singer's trite, tidy but powerfully soundtracked biopic of Freddie Mercury's fantastic journey from immigrant baggage handler to rock god renders the outsize ride of his life with surprising mundanity.

| Feb 26, 2019

The only redeeming value of Bohemian Rhapsody is it's so bad, there's plenty of room left for a much better biopic about the one and only Freddie Mercury.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 20, 2019

Rami Malek is a revelation, but his performance feels wasted in Bohemian Rhapsody, a movie that can't decide if it wants to honor Queen frontman Freddie Mercury or punish him.

| Feb 7, 2019

There's a lot to like, namely Rami Malek, who is essentially Freddie Mercury reincarnated... but overall, it was far too safe for my taste.

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 20, 2018

Bohemian Rhapsody is a movie that consciously tries to position a gay man at its center while strategically disengaging with the "gay" part as much as it can...

| Nov 16, 2018

As for Freddie Mercury, is this his real life? Is this just fantasy - not sure that really matters either. When Malek's strutting like a peacock, this movie is a decently amusing escape from reality.

| Nov 13, 2018

Bohemian Rhapsody is made up almost entirely of contrived biopic signposts - a Queen's 'Greatest Hits' of ah-ha moments.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 12, 2018

Malek does an impressive job of re-creating Mercury's moves onstage, but the core of the performance is Malek's intensely thoughtful, insight-rich channelling of Mercury's hurt, his alienation and isolation even at the height of his fame.

| Nov 6, 2018

Bohemian Rhapsody is not so much a film as it is a dramatization of a Wikipedia entry, watered down and overedited.

| Nov 6, 2018

[It's] possible I hated this overblown mess of a musical biopic something fierce, and I'd rather not say another word about it.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 4, 2018

Ideally, a film like this would attempt to add to, or to contextualize, a legacy. Instead, "Bohemian Rhapsody" tries to sanctify it, pack it in bubble wrap to protect it from causing, or being caught in, any friction.

| Nov 3, 2018

I can't remember the last time I have been so gripped by an actor's performance, from the first frame to the last.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 2, 2018

The film still doesn't quite know how to capture or contain that energy, so it all just sort of goes splat on-screen. It's haphazard, and it somehow just barely works.

| Nov 2, 2018

Freddie Mercury deserves better.

| Nov 2, 2018

It's meticulously staged on a grand and exhilarating scale and the figure of Malek, strutting and capering before that swaying, chanting mass of humanity seems to embody all rock stars in both their vanity and their courage.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 2, 2018

Some of the liberties do Mercury and Queen an injustice, but most are harmless (if dim). A hundred small things wrong barely matter when there are one or two big things right.

| Nov 2, 2018