Gordon, please inform the podcast thread of this fact:
The odd thing is how the movie is getting a 7.5 on IMDB. Clearly this is a manipulated score, it should be way lower. There were people in the theater walking out during the final act, and I wish I had done the same!
Walking out doesn’t mean much. When I saw Magnolia on opening night, a quarter of the audience had walked out by the end of the movie. The first batch was when Tom Cruise strides into closeup for, “Tame the cunt!”, but there was a collective groan and mass exodus (!) when the frogs showed up.
I just watched a Spy Who Dumped Me.
This film had everything:
Mila Kunis, Justin Theroux, Gillian Anderson, Unknown British Actor Bad Ass Whom I Liked Very Much, Ferrari 458 Italia in chrome, Cirque du Soleil, A Literal Thumbstick, Edward Snowden, Prague, hilarious pronounciation of Ustí nad Labem (town where I attended college), jokes made at the expense of everyone, great action, russian bad ass gymnast and 7th of 9 in a borg form.
I enjoyed it very much.
don’t expect high brow entertainment tho’
Did anyone see Bohemian Rhapsody in the theaters this weekend?
Queen’s music is just so amazing, the idea of going to the theater just to hear their music excites me. But I’m too busy these days, and I’m not sure if I can pull off a stealth visit to the theater, and my wife has no interest in it.
The reviews seem largely positive. 60% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Apparently the biopic takes some liberties with the real life story, as most biopics do.
I’m going to wait until the singing people go see it so that it’s not ruined for me. I’m half joking but someone mentioned that happening in the theater either here or elsewhere. It’s a must see for me and the missus.
… what?
Are you saying people start singing in the theater while watching the movie?
Interesting. I might actually enjoy that.
Yep. I mean that’s okay, unless it obnoxious. There are way too many ways that could be obnoxious. I’ll wait it out a bit.
Oh, yeah, its gonna go full Rocky Horror I am sure.
It’s getting execrable reviews.
Oh really? I just saw the Tomato rating, like I said upthread, 60% seemed good for critic reviews. The negative excerpts I saw were complaining about details the movie got wrong.
A 49 Metascore isn’t good.
True, but look at those negative excerpts. The movie gets to Freddie Mercury the showman, but not Freddie Mercury the person? Personally speaking, for watching a movie about Queen on the big screen, I want the showmanship to come through more than I want drama. If I wanted the drama, I’d wait for it to come out on video.
There was a great historical write-up on Reddit when someone asked the question of how was Freddy’s bisexuality perceived at the time by fans. And the long winded summary is that Queen tiptoed on the tail end of glam rock, so a lot of Freddy and the band WAS that showmanship, and playing the act up to 11 for the fans. And after a couple of years, he was extremely quiet about his personal life, to the point of no interviews for a very long time during Queens reign. This lead to Freddy, the showman, to be what fans took to be, Freddy himself.
So I think any move that doesn’t focus on that showmanship is doing a disservice to the band, to be honest.
After all, the show must go on.
Rationalize how you wish. I may even agree. I’m just saying, it’s getting bad reviews.
Basically, if it’s just Beatlemania on film, but with Queen, I’ll be disappointed.
It really is getting some bad reviews, but the audience loves it. I don’t know that liking the song is going to be enough for me, but at least the ticket sales will keep it around long enough for me to decide.
Yeah, I was happy to see it did well at the box office this weekend for the same selfish reason. :)
Middle of the Road 50 rating review from Variety, by Owen Glieberman, a guy I respect.
Excerpt, Spolier-blurred. The spoilers are minor.
Yet for all the attention it lavishes on its title song, “Bohemian Rhapsody” doesn’t show much interest in how Freddie and Queen came together to carve out their heavy-metal/pop-echo-chamber wall of sound. The first true Queen single, “Killer Queen,” in 1974, becomes the occasion for a squabble between the band members and the producers of “Top of the Pops” about why the band has to lip-sync their performance of it on television. But even if that really happened, who cares? What we miss is how the band came up with “Killer Queen” in the first place — the merging of Mercury’s Tin Pan Alley jauntiness and Brian May’s guitar-god power, backed by the insane multi-tracking of Mercury’s voice into an infinitely mirrored chorus. That’s the invention of the Queen sound, and it’s barely an afterthought in the movie.
> As much as that, we miss the formation of what Freddie was onstage. Partly because the film doesn’t want to upstage the Live Aid sequence, there’s hardly a moment where we see Freddie discover who he is as a performer. And here’s why that’s a crucial omission. It wouldn’t be homophobic — in fact, it would be homophobic to deny — that Freddie Mercury brought a spark of gay sensibility to rock ‘n’ roll. He envisioned the concert stage, and the recording studio, as a thunder-rock cabaret, and his vocals projected a newly naked male emotionalism that was stunning in its larger-than-life intensity.
That first paragraph is pretty disappointing. Now that Owen Glieberman mentions it, it would be pretty cool to know how they came with that unique Queen sound.
Yeah most of what I’ve read says I am going to find this movie entertaining at an okay level. I’m okay with that. The people I know who have already seen it, love it but they’re like this:
For Queen and Freddie in particular, so I am pretty sure they’re just ecstatic to have a movie about him and them at all. I don’t see anything that says I will dislike the movie, so I will probably see it with about four people, eventually.