I wanted to go see Creed II but instead I went with a friend to the Freddie Mercury biopic. The posters for both films show a man arching his back and looking upward. I’ve yet to see Creed II to compare the content – will it also rehash the early 80s?
Although with retrospective vision I can see Queen were incredible, growing up on a diet of Guns N Roses and Pantera meant I viewed Queen as incurably naff – as did many of my contemporaries, until Freddy Mercury died in 1991,and the greatest hits were reissued and people realised how good they were. So I can’t claim I thought they were cool long before anyone else did.
The film is mostly very fun. There’s some amusing visual puns (there’s an enormous cock strutting around a farmyard in one scene) and the soundtrack is easily wonderful. I heard a shocked intake of breath the first time Freddy kisses a man (well, this is Singapore, but was that scene such a surprise?) but nobody seemed upset later, when Freddy drops a cigarette butt on the ground instead of stubbing it out in an ashtray. So now homosexuality is bad and littering isn’t? Really, people.
The film culminates with Live Aid, which was an event that seemed a good idea at the time and perhaps wasn’t the universal panacea hoped for. But again, retrospect is a cruel way to view the world. And by then I’d eaten an entire packet of Percy Pigs and my mind was gone.
One response to “Bohemian Rhapsody”
I’ve been reading too many “modern takes on the Greek Classics” recently so as soon as I see two adolescent male characters talking to each I’m immediately thinking, “Get the snog over with already, lads, do you think this has never been done before???”