Bohemian Rhapsody

The music sequences in this drama (especially the Live Aid performance and the recording of the title song) are electrifying, and Malek is magnetic, but overall the movie is slavishly by-the-numbers. Credited to Bryan Singer, who ended up getting fired and replaced by director Dexter Fletcher, Bohemian Rhapsody is almost exactly like many other music biopics, with the same plot arcs covering the rise to success, creativity in action, pitfalls of fame, fighting, bad influences, wrong choices, and then redemption. These real-life stories are of course worth telling, but the difference between following a formula -- one that was thoroughly skewered a decade ago in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story -- and discovering genuine moments of intimacy and life is crucial.

Bohemian Rhapsody had an opportunity with the exuberant Live Aid show, which lasted 20 minutes in real life and made history; here it's the movie's triumphant climax, but it could have been a centerpiece. It's still impressive and very much worth the wait, as is the energized recording of the title song, a joyous circus of creative abandon. It's in these scenes that the band works as a team, while in the more ordinary sequences, Mercury is the lone focus; everything that happens is in relation to him. Given that the movie seems to want to be about families and bonds, it's a little too weighted to one side. But Malek, even acting through a mouthful of prosthetic teeth, does justice to the role; we come away with a great affection for both him and Mercury.