Bohemian Rhapsody: Right tone, wrong timeline

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

The opening lines of the Queen song Bohemian Rhapsody are also the question viewers are left asking after seeing the film of the same name. At least this viewer.

This this is the kind of thing that happens when the fan and the historian are the same person. You love a movie that paints a triumphant picture of your favorite band, but you hate the fact that it paints outside the lines to do it: especially when it messes with the chronology.

Granted, Queen and frontman Freddie Mercury painted outside the lines all the time. It’s part of what made them great, and band members Brian May and Roger Taylor did produce the movie, so ...

Bohemian Rhapsody is epic. I loved it. But it’s also wrong, and what’s troubling about that is that it exposes something about propaganda in general: It gives us not the whole truth, but what we want to believe. The truth on steroids, which is, in the end, not the truth at all. What we end up with is what’s convenient to the storyline, and history be damned.

In an era when politicians rewrite history – without apology – for their own exaltation, that’s even more worrisome.

The Real Rio

The moviemakers decided to make Queen’s inspiring Live Aid performance the lynchpin of Freddie’s life. The film begins with him about to step on stage at Wembley, then ends with the band whipping the massive soccer stadium crowd into a frenzy. That moment was a kind of magic, no question. Queen stole the show. You couldn’t imagine a greater triumph if you tried.

But the film does try. Too hard. Sometimes, it seems like it doesn’t want to be a Queen biopic, but Rocky VII. To create an epic comeback story, it has Freddie quit the band (something that didn’t happen), and posits that he found out he was HIV-positive just before that epic performance. The truth? He wasn’t diagnosed until two years later.

Reality check: Queen released an album called The Works the year before Live Aid, and toured in support of the album after that. That record-breaking Rio performance, depicted in the film as happening sometime in the seventies? It actually took place during this tour, in 1985. The band hadn’t even performed in South America before that. This was during the time the movie suggests Queen was “broken up,” but the Rio show was part of a tour that ended just two months before Live Aid.

Broken up? I don’t think so.

Freddie as Rocky Balboa

None of this is a problem for me as a moviegoer. I happen be a sucker for “Rocky” movies, and the story, as told by the movie, was inspiring. But as a Queen fan and history buff, it made me cringe: The movie should have carried the tag “based on a true story,” because it fudged so many things. Yes, I know Hollywood does this. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

When Ron Howard made Cinderella Man in 2005, he didn’t add to the drama by having Jim Braddock knock out Joe Louis in the final scene. He didn’t have to. Braddock’s shocking win over Max Baer was epic enough. The fact that Braddock lost to Louis in his next fight was no shame, especially when Braddock knocked down the greatest heavyweight of his era in that fight. (There were, to be fair, a few inaccuracies in that film, too; most notably, Baer was portrayed as a jerk, when the real Baer was apparently a teddy bear.)

Some of the historical inaccuracies in Rhapsody don’t add to the drama, but seem wedged in where they don’t belong for no particular reason.

Why, for instance, does Queen play Fat Bottomed Girls on a tour that supposedly took place years before that song was released? And why does the film show We Will Rock You being conceived after Crazy Little Thing Called Love was a hit? Contrary to what the film would have you believe, WWRY came out two albums earlier, and Freddie was not sporting his famous mustache at the time. There’s just no reason to do this sort of thing. Even casual Queen fans will know you’ve gotten it wrong.

What’s there, what’s not

Others have had different problems with the film. Some, for instance, say it glosses over Freddie’s hedonistic lifestyle. I’m OK with that, because the movie made it quite clear that he loved to party and have casual sex. Sometimes, inference is a lot more effective than hitting someone over the head. I don’t need to see one sex-and-drugs scene after another paraded in front of me to get that point; if the movie had done so, it would have bogged down the narrative. I think the moviemakers took the right approach to this one.

They also got the casting right. Rami Malek doesn’t look as much like Freddie as I had hoped, but he makes up for it with a standout performance. And the rest of the band? Gwilym Lee and Ben Hardy are dead ringers for May and Taylor, respectively, and Joseph Mazzello looks a lot like the real John Deacon, too. The hair stylist deserves a shout-out for getting Deacon’s oft-changing coiffures dead-on most of the time.

(If you’re wondering, the photo above shows the three-quarters of the real Queen – Deacon, May and Mercury – on tour in 1977. Notice Mercury does not wear a mustache.)

The film’s lighter moments, such as the argument over Taylor’s tune I’m In Love With My Car, are a lot of fun, if perhaps a bit too few.

The film misses a few gems. David Bowie, whose memorable duet with Freddie on Under Pressure was the best thing about Hot Space, doesn’t make an appearance, and the film also fails to mention that Queen snagged its first Top of the Pops appearance because Bowie had canceled out 24 hours earlier. (Another connection: Queen’s first tour supported Mott the Hoople, whose biggest hit was penned by Bowie.)

Fans love this sort of trivia, but the movie was created for a mass audience, and it’s probably too much to ask that such minutiae be squeezed into 2 hours and 14 minutes of screen time.

And mass audiences seem to love the film. As of this writing, they’re giving it a 94 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while less enthusiastic critics have it at 59 percent. As is often the case, I’m with the fans on this one. To reiterate, I loved the movie.

I would have loved it even more if the fictional Queen had played We Will Rock You in 1977 and Fat Bottomed Girls in 1978, the way the real Queen did.

Was that really too much to ask?

"It" ain't great horror, but it's still a good movie

“It” ain’t scary – at least, it didn’t scare me. But that doesn’t mean it was a bad movie. Funny thing about this one: It worked better as a drama than it did as a horror movie.

Full disclosure: I think it’s pretty hard to do good horror. Most movies I’ve seen in this genre end up drowning in clichés, cheap gotcha scenes/jump scares and an excess of blood. “It” had all of these things at various points, and it was then that it lost my interest.

On the other hand, it held my attention when it focused on the drama behind the horror – how the kids of the town reacted to it emotionally, how they bonded and how it helped reveal and forge their character.

“It” works best as an allegory. The central message, as I saw it, was inspiring: A group of supposed misfits may be better equipped than two-dimensional heroes to do battle with great evil, because they’ve already experienced great evil/adversity. Of course, this theme is nothing new; it’s been explored in everything from the X-Men to the Rocky series. But it’s done very well here.

Stephen King

The main characters are outcasts, reviled and bullied by peers and mistreated/abused by their parents. Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) is the overweight kid who tries to hide the fact he listens to New Kids on the Block; at one point, he’s physically – and brutally – attacked by the town bully. Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) talks with a stutter and feels responsible for the death of his brother. Beverly (Sophia Lillis) has been abused by her father and unfairly branded as “loose” by the mean girls on campus; she finds refuge hanging out with Ben, Bill and their friends.

The true horror in this film is provided by the bullies, Beverly’s father and some of the other adults, all of whom are pretty two-dimensional but work well as a means of developing the younger characters. This is where the film really succeeds. You get to know Bill, Beverly, Ben and their friends, and you get to feel some of what they feel. Few films manage this, and “It” deserves major props for pulling it off.

Bill Skarsgård does a good job of acting psychotic as the villain, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, but the film never truly belongs to him. Instead of the villain stealing the show from the hero, as Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson did as The Joker in “Batman” films, the heroes steal “It” from the villain. This is not a knock on Skarsgård, but rather recognition of how well the young characters were written and acted.

(I don’t generally find clowns scary, funny or interesting in general, so that element of the film didn’t connect with me.)

“It” is best at the beginning and the end, when it first develops the young characters and, later, reveals their inner strength. Each of the young actors (particularly Lillis and Taylor) does a great job. Finn Wolfhard provides some fun comic relief as Richie, and Chosen Jacobs is effective as Mike. The middle of the film, however, degenerates into a series of gotcha scenes, a supernatural bloodbath and a haunted house excursion that could have been plucked from pretty much any standard horror movie template. Yawn. There are only so many times the monster can jump out “unexpectedly” from behind the curtain before you start, well, expecting it. At such times, I found myself saying, “Get on with it, already.”

Fortunately, the movie does, and it picks up well from there.

I haven’t read the Stephen King novel on which this was based or seen the 1990 TV production with Tim Curry, so I’m reviewing this film solely on its own merits. Coming in cold, I interpreted the villain allegorically, as a personification of the townspeople’s fear, which I thought made the film even stronger; I was a little disappointed to find out that the clown is, apparently, a real being, but the film still works well based on first-rate acting and, overall, good writing.

While there’s clearly a sequel in the works, "It" stands up well on its own. (One loose end: We find out the monster appears every 27 years, but the film never explains why.)

Although I thought it didn’t really work as a horror flick, “It” more than succeeded as an examination of the human condition … which is a heck of a lot more interesting to me, anyway. I’d give it a B overall, and say it’s definitely worth seeing. Acting: A. Story: B-plus. Horror: D-plus.

"Rogue One" is no Force to be reckoned with

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

This time, the Empire has no clothes.

Critics and fans seem to be enjoying the latest Star Wars movie, with 85 percent of critics and 89 percent of fans on Rotten Tomatoes saying they enjoyed it.

I’m not sure what movie most of them are watching, but I’m not sure it was the same one I saw on New Year’s Day. The one I watched featured two-dimensional characters, hackneyed dialogue, a parade of clichés and action scenes that seemed interminable.

It’s almost as if fans were so relieved at how good The Force Awakens was, they were willing to assume Disney would roll out the same level of quality in its second visit to the Star Wars universe.

No such luck.

Rogue One fell flat for me almost from the outset. The backstory for its main protagonist, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), seemed all too familiar: The Empire sends its goons to an isolated outpost to disrupt a family that’s apparently minding its own business. Jyn’s mother, inexplicably, leaves her daughter (who looks like she’s about 6 or 7 years old) out in the middle of nowhere to run back and confront a heavily armed group of men intent on taking her husband away.

Bad idea. It might have made sense if she had some command of the Force, but as it was, all she had was a gun and her misplaced bravado wound up getting her shot and killed – leaving her husband to be carted away and her daughter an orphan without food or shelter. I don’t know whether I’d nominate her for a Darwin Award or cross her off my Mother of the Year list first.

I hoped that the ensuing script would develop Jyn into a complex character I could root for, but that never happened. She seemed to little more than a pale imitation of Rey, the protagonist from The Force Awakens … but without any Force to awaken. In fact, there’s only one light sabre in the entire movie, and the Force seems largely relegated to the sidelines. It appears most often in empty pseudo-religious references, none more annoying than blind martial arts wizard Chirrut Îmwe’s (Donnie Yen) frenetic repetition of the mantra “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.”

I found this as annoying as many people found Jar Jar Binks.

The saying could have been employed with some gravitas at high-tension points to show the character focusing his resolve. But instead it seems to have been inserted almost randomly, and at a 78-rpm speed that makes Imwe sound like he’s channeling the Chipmunks. The result is that he seems more distracted than focused.

Beyond that, the Force takes a back seat to machine-gun shootouts and a space battle that seems tedious minus Luke Skywalker’s piloting prowess.

Boredom at breakneck speed

How can a viewer get bored with so much going on?

It can happen, believe me. The movie sets a frenetic pace but winds up taking us almost nowhere not fast enough. It starts out by hopscotching from planet to planet like a manic Bugs Bunny in space – without Marvin the Martian as comic relief. (There’s very little comedy in the movie, which is another of its failings; most of the humor involves throwback references to other Star Wars films.) And it ends with an overly long space battle in which X-wing fighters are really doing little more than providing cover for the really important stuff going on down below.

The writers seem to have been so absorbed with their action sequences that they ran out of time for meaningful character development. Forest Whitaker offers a hint at some complexity as Saw Gerrera, a radical who has broken with the Alliance to fight the Empire as a terrorist. But the conflict between this approach and the more cautious course charted by the Alliance is never explored fully (beyond the decision of Jyn and company to fly off to Scarif against the council’s order’s). Meanwhile, Gerrera himself chooses to stay behind and get crushed by an earthen tidal wave rather than trying to escape. In essence, the character acts against his own survival instincts and passes up the chance to continue a fight to which he has dedicated his life.

It makes zero sense.

For some reason, the writers ate up valuable screen time with a meaningless flashback early in the movie, a “feel-good” cameo by C3PO and R2D2 that had no relevance to the script and several “appearances” by a CGI version of Peter Cushing – who was reanimated (he’s been dead for more than two decades) to reprise a role that could have been left out of the script without being missed. Better yet, the writers could have used Darth Vader in a more central role, given the fact that Vader’s voice – James Earl Jones – is still very much alive and his armor requires zero CGI. But maybe that was the point: The filmmakers wanted to show off their CGI prowess, and if you think whiz-bang special effects are what made the Star Wars franchise interesting, that’s exactly what you’re likely to do.

And yes, the special effects are part of it. The climactic scenes on and above Scarif are dazzling, but the scene – with its palm trees and tropical setting – reminded me of the climactic scene of Men in Black 3, which played out similarly with a tense encounter atop a high tower, and to much better effect. Then again, I challenge anyone to argue that Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones or Josh Brolin wouldn’t have made Rogue One a better movie.

Killing spree

If you’re introducing new actors and new characters, it’s hard to care much about them when they’re getting killed off left and right before we get a chance to really know them. George R.R. Martin may dispatch beloved (and hated) characters with gleeful abandon, but at least he lets us get acquainted before they die. The same can’t be said for the characters in Rogue One, virtually all of whom perish before the carnage is over – even a reprogrammed imperial droid. The scene in which Jyn and nascent love interest Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) die on the beach at the end fails to elicit much pathos because there’s not enough time for their relationship to develop any depth.

Killing everyone off, to be sure, saves the writers from explaining why they don’t appear in the series’ “next” movie, chronologically speaking (the original Star Wars), given the fact that it was released nearly four decades ago.

Maybe CGI could have solved that problem for them, too. Thankfully, they knew better than to monkey around with a classic.

And a classic is one thing Rogue One is not. If you're expecting a film on a par with the original trilogy, this is not the Star Wars you're looking for. No offense to those who enjoyed it, but if The Force Awakens injected a new hope into the franchise, this installment did the opposite. My personal hope is that Disney returns to the Rey-Finn storyline launched in the 2015 film and dispenses with further prequels, which always seem to be more disappointing than the movies in the series that advance the story chronologically.

I’ll go see that movie. Rogue One didn’t kill my enjoyment of Star Wars, even though it tried its best.

The Force Would Not Be With the Empire in a War With the Federation

Ever wonder how a battle between the United Federation of Planets and the Galactic Empire might play out? Wonder no more. Here's why the Federation (Star Trek) would defeat the Empire (Star Wars) without even breaking a sweat.

1. Cloaking technology - advantage Federation. Yes, Kirk and Spock stole this from the Romulans, but that only goes to show they're better spies, too.
2. Transporter technology - advantage Federation.
3. Logic - advantage Federation (no Vulcans in the empire).
4. Artificial intelligence - advantage Federation. Sorry, R2D2, but you're no Data.
5. Time travel capability - advantage Federation.
6. Navigational prowess - advantage Federation. Yes, Han Solo is a decent improvisational pilot, but he doesn't stack up against Data, Dax or Sulu; besides, when did he ever engineer a trip to the past by attempting a slingshot maneuver around a star?
7. Weapons capabilities - advantage Federation. Comparing a light saber to a phaser is like comparing a broadsword to a machine gun. That's not to mention photon torpedoes, quantum torpedoes and the potential doomsday use of the Genesis device. Two words that would be enough to make Vader soil that plastic-plated "armor" of his: Locking phasers. 
8. Tractor-beam technology - advantage Federation. Just lock onto that Death Star and haul it into the nearest black hole.
9. Empaths - advantage Federation (no Betazoids in the empire).
10. Diversity - advantage Federation (more than 150 member worlds vs. lookalike storm troopers).
11. Bad-ass warriors - advantage Federation. Can you name a single member of the empire who could stand up to a Klingon warrior with a bat'leth? Or without one, for that matter? Jar-Jar Binks, maybe? Jabba the Hutt? I think not. The Federation could also call on Mr. Spock, Kira Nerys, Jadzia Dax, Hikaru Sulu and others who are quite skilled at physical combat.
12. Shield (force field) technology - advantage Federation. Two words that should strike terror into the heart of anyone aboard the Death Star.
13. Medicine - advantage Federation. Let's see: McCoy, Crusher, Phlox, Bashir, Pulaski, EMH (The Doctor). Do they even have physicians in the empire, let alone tricorders? How about dermal, bone and cellular regenerators? Thought not.
14. Financing - advantage Federation. The presence of a Ferengi (Nog) in Starfleet and another (Quark) on a Federation space station gives the Federation a definite edge in terms of raising enough gold-pressed latinum to finance the very short war that would be needed to force the empire's surrender.
15. Engineering expertise - advantage Federation. Does the empire have anyone approaching the skill levels of Montgomery Scott, Geordi LaForge, Miles O'Brien, B'Elanna Torres or Trip Tucker? Does it even have engineers at all, or is everything held together with duct tape and the Force?
16. Holodecks/suites - advantage Federation. Great venues for everything for combat training to R and R. Nothing like that in the empire.
17. Quality of opposition - advantage Federation. Starfleet has faced off against the Borg, Klingons, Romulans, Andoreans, Jem'Hadar, Changelings, Cardassians, rogue Vulcans, genetically engineered humans, crystalline entities, Xindi, time-traveling Suliban, Mirror Universe alter egos. ... I'll stop there. Talk about opportunities to hone your skills. The empire lost its shirt at the hands of the Rebel Alliance, which would be like the Maquis conquering the Federation. Um, no. Not gonna happen.
18. Leadership - advantage Federation. I'll take Sisko, Kirk, Picard, Archer, Janeway, Spock, Data, Sulu, Scotty, Dax, etc. over Vader's posturing and Palpatine's bloated arrogance any day. I'll also take Spock's logic over any Jedi's nebulous talk about the Force without hesitation.
19. Space travel - advantage Federation. Starfleet has multiple classes of starship featuring creative designs, not to mention space stations, runabouts, shuttles and so forth. Most Star Wars ships, by contrast, look like glorified USAF fighter jets or battleships floating out in space. Starfleet ships also come equipped with warp drive, and Deep Space Nine offers immediate access to a wormhole. We're looking at a fleet of Ferraris and Porsches standing next to a bunch of rickshaws and Model-T's.
20. Natural abilities - advantage Federation. Yes, Jedis can wield the force, but that's no match for Q, who, despite his mercurial nature and propensity for creating obstacles, always seems to have the Federation's back when it's most needed. And if Starfleet managed to locate and enlist the help of Kevin Uxbridge ... well, do you really mean to suggest that Palpatine or Vader would be any match for a Douwd? 

The fate of the Galactic Empire would be decided the moment Picard said, "Make it so," and the war would be over faster than a replicator could deliver a steaming cup of Earl Grey to his eagerly waiting hands.