WIG REVIEW: BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY
Yes, I saw the #1 movie in America the weekend it opened. YAYYYS I saw it for free using Moviepass (!) YES IT IS THE WORST BIOPIC I HAVE EVER SEEN. Yes, really. And I have seen Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story starring Anthony Michael Hall! This is worse! But what about the wigs? Buckle up - I HAVE A LOT TO DISCUSS.
Straight up: I love Queen and Freddie Mercury. And when this movie was announced, I feared that their/his story would be sullied AND I WAS RIGHT. As was Sacha Baron Cohen (THE ONLY PERSON WHO COULD HAVE PLAYED FREDDIE MERCURY) for walking away from this doomed project years ago. We were left with Rami Malek as Mercury instead. I do not watch I, Robot and as far as I can tell, Malek is a malnourished baby bird who is trying his hardest under bad script and directional circumstances.
We first see him in this lewk which I can only describe as offbrand Laurie Metcalf. This is not the worst wig but gurl it ain’t good.
Before you can say “what year did Laurie Metcalf get that perm on Roseanne?” Mercury suddenly goes from bullied college student/airport baggage attendant to lead singer of of Queen aka “HIS FAMILY!!!!!!” because why waste time on character or story development?! BRING ON THE SILVER CATSUIT AND HOPE EVERYONE JUST LIKES HIS LIPSYNCING! To be fair, Malek can lip sync for his LIFE - even with those prosthetic chompers - and enduring a new wig with bangs that screams “80s mallrat turned single mother”
Also right before officially joining Queen, Mercury meets this bish named Mary who he likes because from what I can tell, she has a nice fur coat and can get him a discount at BIBA. Hey, sounds like true love to me! This movie tells you (for 2+) hours that Mary was Mercury’s AIN’ TRUE LOVE despite him being bi and also giving no examples as to why they like each other except for love of fashion and cats (though this is how I determined most of my gay friendships in college but I didn’t make an overlong movie about it).
I will give this movie credit for showing Mercury to be the crazy cat lady that he was but honestly, I could have used more kitty content. This movie could have used at LEAST half an hour more on these cats. Seriously.
Instead, we got to see these bedraggled wigs screaming into microphones as they tried to finesse the finer points of the song Bohemian Rhapsody. All of these wigs are basically Halloween versions of Spinal Tap wigs as are the characterizations.
UGH AND THEN MIKE MYERS TURNED UP. Look, I love So I Married An Axe Murderer as much as the next guy but OYYY. Myers plays an EMI executive who refuses to release Bohemian Rhapsody as a single because it’s too long and operatic and says something like, “no one will ever sing along to the radio to this in their car” because THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HE DOES IN WAYNE’S WORLD, GET IT?!?!?!?!?! If that Easter Egg doesn’t make your eyes roll out into the Black Sea, his “Da Bears SNL Sketch” look certainly will.
Of course, Bohemian Rhapsody goes on to be a huge hit and the movie trolls you by putting a bunch of negative reviews of the song on the screen to prove JUST HOW WRONG EVERYONE WAS and just as you’re getting to the singalong part of the song, the movie inexplicably moves into tour montage territory because ????? There are zero consistencies stylistically or otherwise in this movie and it is definitely NOT for anyone who actually likes Queen’s music as their songs are interspersed like a frenetic wedding DJ and their best album, Sheer Heart Attack, doesn’t even get a mention.
The movie is far more content making you wonder whether Mercury will marry Mary despite his bisexuality (spoiler alert: HE DOESN’T) and telling you about ever 5 minutes that QUEEN IS A FAMILY SO STOP TRYING TO BREAK US UP, IRISH CHAUFFEUR FROM DOWNTON ABBEY!
The wigs get progressively scraggly throughout the late 70s until Mercury decides to cut off all his hair and get a stache which signals the end for the band for some reason (?) and leads to another Easter Egg in which the dude who plays Brian May (who really does look a lot like him) says that he’ll never get a haircut. GET IT, BECAUSE HE NEVER DID.
Throughout the film, May (who may have been the reason Sacha Baron Cohen rightly walked from this mess) is shown as an angelic guitar god who gave the world (and mainly Queen’s fans) WE WILL ROCK YOU AND THEREFORE CANNOT DO ANY WRONG. Mercury, on the other hand, is led to hell and back via a leather bar and a shitty solo career in Munich by Littlefinger from Game of Thrones and that Downton chauffeur with a mustache. Nothing gets too scandalous or seedy because this movie is rated PG-13 for some reason so you will definitely see Mercury get diagnosed with AIDS but you won’t see how. I choose to blame parttime director and fulltime asshole Bryan Singer for most of the movie’s flaws. OF WHICH THERE ARE MANY. May he be electrocuted in a hot tub for his many crimes, of which this is #1.
And then we come to the uncanny valley of an ending! This movie chooses to believe that the apex of Queen was their Live Aid performance which is recreated through ALL OF THE COMPUTERS. But first, Mercury goes and finds this random cater waiter who he met once and brings him directly to meet his Indian parents so that his dad can tell him he loves him all on the way to Wembley Stadium the course of about 2 minutes so that they could spend a full 20 minutes showing you THE ENTIRE LIVE AID SET. Because you’d definitely rather watch Malek be Mercury performing to a sea of computers than just, you know, watching the actual performance on YouTube. Meanwhile, some doofus playing Bob Geldof in a sad mullet wig sits in a silent room where no one is making ANY donations for Live Aid until Queen performs. “Based on a true story” has never been truer. IN CONCLUSION I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO MAD AT A MOVIE. Actual footage of Queen performing “Don’t Stop Me Now” plays over the credits and is the only watchable part of the film.
