Was this his real life? Was it just fantasy?

So after one of the most publicly troubled productions in the past few years Bohemian Rhapsody is finally here, so the only question left to ask is, is it worth it? In a word yes. Although failing when it comes to accurately telling the story of Freddie Mercury and Queen it succeeds in more than one way and an excellent film.

The film focuses on the life and career of Queen Front man Freddie Mercury and in many ways does a fine job of giving us a sense of his life opposed to a play by play of the life of queen. It must be mentions very early on that because of the fact that both Queens Guitarist and Drummer, Brian May and Roger Taylor were executive producers on the film so some of the more questionable moments in Queens history were left out such as their 1984 performance in apartheid Africa, also changing the date in which Freddie got his horrific diagnosis so that it can play more of a dramatic role with in the story they wanted to tell.

On a plot front it must be said that all of the changes that were made to the story help make it work. The pacing of the film is one of the huge highlights of the film. With a run time of over two hours there was a huge worry that the film could slow down but instead it starts of rather slow, this is so that we can get a feeling for the characters before it slowly starts to build towards a huge fanfare of a finish. The largest praise I can give this movie is that at no point during the whole run time did I check the time, become restless or even get bored.

Helping to make this possible is the tremendous cast, going into the film this was a huge worry of mine having followed the production I was completely on board with the casting Sacha Baron Cohen. His departure could have been a massive loss but they seem to have found arguably a better Freddie in Mr Robot himself Remi Malek. He embodied the late Freddie Mercury like no one else could and during the Live Aid section of the film fills the say with the same Gravitas and charisma as the legend himself.

It isn’t just Malek though with strong performances across the board with performances from Lucy Boynton playing Mary Austin and Allen Leech as Paul Prenter being particular stand outs, The formers chemistry with Malek is sensation and may be down to the romantic relationship between the two leads but this does not but benefit the overall film.