Bohemian Rhapsody & King Rollo

The rest of us were only too happy to derail Dan's well-thought out hitchhiker themed week in order to produce a hastily assembled and confused tribute of sorts to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, starting with a discussion of the Top 5 Queens. BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (2018) is a biopic of Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek), charting his journey from talented and ambitious baggage handler Farrokh Bulsara in the 1970's to frontman of arena rock band Queen, culminating in a recreation of their triumphant and iconic 1985 Live Aid performance.  Paced like a Wikipedia plot summary this movie’s biggest crime is its inauthenticity: both its factual inaccuracy but more importantly it never feels very real and consequently I never felt I knew Freddie Mercury better after having watched it. Malek's excessive performance is so distracting I couldn’t work out if he was doing a caricature or simply trying to keep his prosthetic teeth in, and a broad and formulaic story never seems to have anything interesting at all to say about race, LGBTQ+ lifestyles or the experience of having HIV in the 1980's during the height of the AIDS crisis , territory covered much better by PRIDE or the British mini-series IT'S A SIN. It's impossible not to mention an excruciating cameo from Mike Myers as a fictional embodiment of Queen's critics, an EMI executive of limited artistic vision who thinks the track from which the movie bears its name is too long, composed of nonsensical words and that teenagers will never bang their heads to in a car. Get it? Because that is the exact thing WAYNE'S WORLD did! If the best part for you was the recreation of the Live Aid performance where you can enjoy Malek pretending to be Freddie and lip syncing in front of the kind of weird CGI crowd you'd usually find in a video game just watch the f*cking original concert. It's not really a surprise this one is such a mess. Sasha Baron Cohen was attached to the project for a long time but dropped out, objecting to what he saw as the sanitisation of Freddie's story by the producers, in particular I suspect Brian May and Roger Taylor who are portrayed as the most responsible members of the group and consequently are boring nonentities. Director Brian Singer was fired part way into filming which might have been because he rarely showed up to set leaving cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel in charge much of the time, or may have had something to do with the tsunami of sexual misconduct allegations which were heading his way, and the last third of filming and all the post production were completed by Dexter Fletcher (ROCKETMAN). In the interests of balance I should probably say that not all of the Bad Dads felt the same way - in fact angrily so in some cases - and that the movie won several Oscars, Malek's performance in particular drawing praise, while a win for Best Achievement in Film Editing completely redefines the meaning of the words "Best", "Achievement" and "Editing". I can honestly say I’ve never seen a microphone get an origin story before, so there is that. KING ROLLO is another David McKee creation, the man-child sovereign of an unspecified kingdom who is enraged when his resident Magician reads his comic first and then ignores his dinner guest Queen Gwen before they are all deposed in a violent, bloodthirsty revolution.We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. Try us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at [email protected] or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads