The teeth seemed right to me, but it looks like the part above the gum line that hold the teeth in place pushes his lip too far out. Not sure there’s much to be done about that.
It definitely sounded like he was having trouble talking in certain points in the movie though.
Slightly off-topic:
I watched the documentary on Netflix yesterday about Adam Lambert and Queen. I was peripherally aware that Adam Lambert had been touring with Queen as the lead singer because of their appearances related to this movie.
There were two things I gained out of the documentary:
Holy shit, look at these crowds! And they’re mostly young people coming to see Queen, not older people.
I had only thought of Adam Lambert gaining by getting a gig, it never occurred to me how grateful the remaining members of Queen would be to be touring again and playing to huge crowds again. They’ve missed that a lot since Freddie died.
I discovered this within the first few minutes of the doc, and the rest doesn’t have too much new information, but it was still pleasant to watch the whole thing because it’s Queen music, and Adam is pretty good.
So much this. I made it about half way through and then gave up. I am as big a fan and maybe even more so than Trig. But the movie got so much of the story plain wrong. And I soaked up everything about Queen in the 70s/80s. It just didn’t work for me.
Agreed 100%. My understanding is that the surviving members of the band forced them to whitewash the story.
Roger Taylor:
I was 18 [in 1967] and as far as my parents were concerned, I was going to get a grant and go to college. But all I was really interested in was forming a band. London was fantastic and full of music in the late Sixties—The Who, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix.
I got into London Hospital Medical College, studying dentistry, but I used to hang out at the bar in Imperial College. One day, I bumped into this guy called Brian May, who was doing a PhD in astronomy. He told me he played guitar, so we got together a few times and, blimey, he was good. We immediately became mates and we’re still mates today!
About 1969, I opened a stall in Kensington Market, which was one of the hippest places in London. I used to run it with this bloke, Freddie, who I knew because he regularly came to see Smile, the band Brian and I were in at the time. Me and Fred used to sell old Edwardian clothes and scarves that he picked up from various nefarious dealers.
Back then, I didn’t really know him as a singer—he was just my mate. My crazy mate! If there was fun to be had, Freddie and I were usually involved.
After we formed Queen, he used to come down and stay at my parents’ house. Mum loved it. He was always immaculately turned out and she could never understand how he got his trousers so perfectly creased. In fact, after he took them off, he would lay them dead straight underneath his mattress on the floor. He pressed them while he was sleeping!
IMO Rocketman did this better and was a better movie all around. Also, Rami Malek did a great job, but the award for best depiction of a 70s rock star should have gone to Taron Edgerton.
I enjoyed the movie, but also realized - similar to the feelings I got from triggercut - that it was more a movie ‘based on real events’ than a biopic. I also can’t get enough of the Live Aid concert, despite all the stuff that was wrong surrounding it (Freddie telling the band he had AIDS, the money all of a sudden pouring in when Queen was playing). And by that, I mean the version on the Blu Ray that has the whole concert, and not the one with the two songs cut out for the movie (if memory serves, they cut out ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and ‘We Will Rock You’). And, certainly, I did learn a couple of true things from the movie - such as his relationship with Mary (which was largely correct) and the whole bit about his cats, and him calling home to talk to them. I think it’s still a fun movie so long as you realize it is more ‘based on true events’ rather than true.
And the music is still awesome.
I do still need to see ‘Rocketman’, tho - although I expect it’s more of the same.
I really enjoyed BoRhap even if some items were changed. I felt Rocketman to be a lot less enjoyable for some reason, maybe because it was a lot darker and closer to reality. I do enjoy the music of both Queen and Elton.
I liked Rocketman because it was more a jukebox musical than a biopic. Biopics of musical acts are kind of masturbatory. These people aren’t really all that interesting; they’re just famous, and–especially for musical artists–their stories all are quite similar. So just, you know, play the damn songs and have cool theatrical dance numbers with them. BR is an aggressively sanitized (i.e. entirely meh) version of Mercury’s life story that has a few scenes where he (and his band) are performing. There’s nothing affecting here; the characters are wholly unconvincing and you don’t care about them. If they weren’t ostensibly based on real people, the film would be a dumb Lifetime special. Oh, and they spend a huge amount of effort recreating in exquisite detail a musical performance that was originally exhaustively captured on camera and has been readily available for viewing for decades.
Huh? Compared to the lives of, what, extraordinary scientists, engineers, writers? I don’t know how you reach the general conclusion that extraordinary musicians are categorically not interesting.
Personally, I think extraordinary people, in general, tend to have fascinating lives. It’s almost part and parcel of being someone who stands out from the crowd by such an extraordinary degree. I’m sure some of them have bog standard lives, but I suspect most don’t.
Because I’ve seen a bunch of musician biopics: they always start in obscurity with people mistaking their genius for weirdness, then someone recognizes their genius, they play small venues, then bigger ones, a dumb record company rejects them, a smart one gives them a chance, they tour the States, then they’re stars, then they almost throw everything away with drugs and other self-destructive behavior, then they either die young or crawl back from the brink.
Bleh. There are 1,000,000 struggling gifted musicians out there making phenomenal music. The ones who make it are lucky, not generation-defining talents. They almost never have anything of real note to say: no insight about the human condition, no philosophical breakthrough (unless you could the collective wisdom of Fat Bottomed Girls, Whole Lotta Rosie, Baby’s Got Back, and Anaconda.) They aren’t leaders of people or visionaries who usher in a paradigm shift in culture. They just make music that’s enjoyable to listen to and lead lives of decadence and dissolution. How many films do we really need about the destructive habits of the nouveau riche?
Did you watch the Apple TV+ Beastie Boys documentary? You pretty much described it perfectly here, yet it’s still compelling to watch.