Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody

Thomas Taylor | Contributing Writer 

Days before his death in 1991, Freddie Mercury met with his manager to discuss the rights to both the use of his image and music in the foreseeable future. "You can do what you want with my music," he said, "but don't make me boring." Sadly, Brian Singer’s film, Bohemian Rhapsody, ignores his final wish and tells an incredibly boring and predictable story. The movie follows Freddie Mercury’s personal life, but edits it to create a bland, by-the-numbers biography that had all the creativity of a first graders’ oral presentation. It hits every musician biopic cliché that it was hard not to wonder if it was satire like Walk Hard. It’s not that the story was boring, but how Singer structured it was though. With a better director at the helm, I feel like the movie could have been a lot more enjoyable. Bohemian Rhapsody hits all of the overused beats that are used in music biopics such as: the musician is made fun of before performing, the musician blows everyone away with his/her talent, the musician lets fame go to his/her head, and the musician learns a lesson before the “big show.” The only saving grace of the movie is the music, but that’s because they just use Queen’s hits. I would have liked them to use some of Queen’s lesser known songs, but the music they used did distract from how boring the movie is itself. With a two hour run-time, Bohemian Rhapsody feels longer than it should.