Bohemian Rhapsody

And Africa never starved again.

See it in LightVibes™ or risk not not hating it.

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Reported on 10th of April, 2019

I liked Bohemian Rhapsody. It is the gay biopic that Behind the Candelabra wished I wished it was – full of musical numbers, parents saying you have to get a straight job, a fall, a comeback and lots of hugs at the end. There are suits telling them ‘you can’t do that!’, and a straight-laced accountant who secretly likes their music. All hedonism kept off-screen PG, which makes it loom larger in the mind. Hardly a great film, but a kind one.

Bohemian Rhapsody

6 November 2018 @ The Cinéma CGR Paris Lilas

$6.50 or, if one must be prosaic, and one must...
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

That’s it on the film. Because I probably wouldn’t have liked one tenth as much if I hadn’t seen it in LightVibes™. I’m glad I didn’t see 12 Years a Slave on LightVibes™ or I would have liked it. What is LightVibes™, you ask, besides an excuse to repeatedly type option 2 in the dark, over and over? It is the greatest gimmick since The – ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic! But SCREAM! Scream for your lives’ – Tingler (registered trademark we hadn’t invented the trademark™ joke back then).

Sadly, the ticket is back in Saint-Briac. This minor point: even during the non flashy-flashy parts, the screen reflects on the lights. Even when nothing is happening, the gimmick is gimmicky!

Having got a preview of this at a screening of Venom, I knew that I would be seeing Bohemian Rhapsody – during the preview, lights strobe and shine in your face during some, nay, nearly all of the film. There are lights in the dining room scene, huge flashing banks during scene in a tiny club scene. Lightning? Even the hint of a cloudy sky? It’s seizure inducing strobes ‘Я’ us. By the end credits, they turned the spotlights onto the audience. It’s you, the viewer: you are the real hero!

But it’s the beginning that really got me, this time putting it at the end, against my usual tradition. Having the spotlights of the 20th Century Slug, with that music that still hasn’t changed, in sync with real spotlights that are shining on you, everyone, across the whole auditorium. It’s how you imagined the logo when you first saw it as a kid, like after Star Wars, or better still, that weird TV show that featured only Fox movie clips when we were too stupid to know what shilling was. It is the feeling that you really could make a movie. At this point, the following occurred:

SCOTT

(single tear)

John Waters would have loved this.

GUY BEHIND ME

John Waters isn’t dead.

JOHN WATERS

(behind the guy behind me)

Shh.

The Take

Profits! and…

Losses!

‘How could you?’ is the ideal response to ‘I’m pregnant.’ I don’t promise not to use it on you.

$2.00

There was something unexpectedly decent about focusing on the relationship between Mr. Remi Malek and his beard (Ms. Lucy Boynton). You got the sense the film could be about a friendship…

$3.00

… squandered with the CUs of the Boyfriend You Knew For Five Seconds Symbolizing Monogamy at the end

$1.00

But that’s the thing about Melodrama, all the nails that stand up are hammered down.

$2.00

And there was the love between the members of the band. Which didn’t hurt neither.

$2.00

The band who, unfortunately, wore the worst wigs since Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Sigh.

$2.00

I don’t like the twenty years earlier conceit…

$0.50

… but the film pulls it off, learning slowly that Mr. Malek might not be able to actually sing in front of all those people. I’d say ‘even though we know he did’, but I’m having received my first senior discount, I’m no longer assuming that anyone knows that Freddy Mercury isn’t a grizzled Roman prospector that killed Lincoln to save Westeros. In other words, sometimes this gimmick works.

$3.00