The enormous success of Bohemian Rhapsody in particular is galling to me. I quite like Rami Malek as an actor, and I can't for the life of me understand why he was nominated for an Oscar for his performance an Freddie Mercury, let alone won the final prize.
He does a decent job of replicating the physicality of Mercury, but it's a essentially a competent karaoke performance, as is the rest of the movie. It only comes alive when one of several classic Queen hits is performed but it's leaden dramatic portions -- it's plays like a Lifetime-Vh1 movie mash-up -- as so stupefying simplistic and obviously skewed to suit the surviving members of the bands standards (there is great effort to spread credit for the band's success around to its lesser known members) that it detracts from anything that could have been appealing about the movie.
Other than asserting that he was lonely, the film has no real insight into Mercury or the band for that matter. For instance, it's fascinating that the band was so critically reviled and dismissed in their time, the movie touches on that in a very perfunctory way. In fact, the movie does a terrible time of evoking the 70s-80s atmosphere its meant to portray.
And since the dialogue is all cliched and simplistic why not just turn the movie into a full blown musical? And then there's the film's strange handling of Mercury's bisexuality, as if it were a crippling problem that he had to overcome. When the movie isn't bad it is frequently offensive and not really any fun -- which is a shame since so much of the music truly is.
I remembered thinking that the bashing of this movie may have been overstated but now I am simply stunned that this movie grossed $200 million and pushed more worthy films like If Beale Street Could Talk out of awards contention.
The Wife may be even more ludicrous. It was supposed to be the film that finally won Glenn Close an Academy Award -- and I hate to say this, because I'm a fan of hers, but I am glad she didn't win for this one. Again, this feels like a glorified TV movie and a stupefyingly simplistic one at that.
It wants to be a pro-feminist drama but it draws its antagonists so broadly and cartoonishly -- suggesting that simply no one would respect or appreciate a female author in the 20th century -- OK movie. It's full of moments that are supposed to be emotionally devastating but are just eyeball inducing.
And that doesn't even begin to address these movies flaws -- which include a totally implausible journalist/author character played by Christian Slater who seems to exist only to state and re-state the premise of the film and why Close's character is the hero.
There is nothing as problematic in it as Bohemian Rhapsody's dishonest handling of Queen's Live Aid performance -- but it's the worst kind of pseudo-feminism, it's trite when it should have real bite.
It's always disheartening when movies like this or Crash or The Blind Side or Green Book enjoy some measure of success because they provide such a superficial look at the complexity of the topics they're attempting to tackle. They both condescend to their audience but also deter them from seeking out smarter, more nuanced takes on the same subject.
There could have been a better, more interesting Queen movie -- originally Sacha Baron Cohen was attached, and there's no doubt in mind he would have brought more danger and excitement to the movie. And The Wife, which is basically about a shitty husband taking credit for his wife's work, is a potent topic, especially in this #MeToo era, but this film is too heavy handed to ever feel incisive.
Better luck next time I guess.
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