(Washington Post Illustration; iStock)Pop music criticIf you truly love Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a Jenga tower of a biopic — doomed from the start, anxious fun after that, with everything toppling to bits in the final scene. And that’s why the Jenga blocks start to wobble in the middle of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” when Queen begins to tour the American highways in a montage sequence of re-created concerts. What he doesn’t have is Mercury’s limbs, Mercury’s ligaments, Mercury’s muscle memory or Mercury’s neurons telling Mercury’s brain what Mercury’s ears are hearing and how it might inform where Mercury’s tush should go next. I’d argue that this unsolvable little problem proves fatal in every musical biopic ever made — the good ones, the lousy ones, even the ones I haven’t seen. “Bohemian Rhapsody” almost does the complete inverse.

Source: Washington Post February 20, 2019 19:07 UTC