WARNING: SPOILERS

Queen’s performance at Live Aid, July 13, 1985, before 100,000 people at Wembley Stadium and millions watching worldwide, is often called one of the great live performances in rock history. And not just by its fans. Backstage, Elton John supposedly told the band, “You bastards, you just stole the show.” Dave Grohl, who’s played his share of stadium concerts, and knows a thing or two about how that can distance you from your audience, has said this:

Every band should study Queen at Live Aid. If you really feel like that barrier is gone, you become Freddie Mercury. I consider him the greatest frontman of all time.

It wasn’t just the vocals and the strut, it was the interaction with the crowd: the whole DAY-oh! thing. He got them going and moving and a part of it. It’s become legend. 

“Bohemian Rhapsody,” the new biopic of Freddie Mercury, smartly ends with that concert.

Not so smartly? They try to tie up all the loose ends and anticipate the next six years of Freddie’s life before his death of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 45. 

I’m not talking about telling the other members of the band he has AIDS in 1985 rather than 1989. I’m not even talking about the rationale for Queen’s late entry into Live Aid. For the movie, Freddie’s nefarious assistant, Paul Prenter (Allen Leech of “Dowtown Abbey”), wasn’t relaying messages to Freddie, keeping him in a bubble, and away from friends and family. This included tearing up a desperate message that Queen was wanted at Live Aid. Except it wasn’t. In truth, the concert’s organizer, Bob Geldof of Boomtown Rats fame (“I Don’t Like Mondays”), didn’t even want them. Queen kept playing venues that were being boycotted by everyone else: Argentina in 1981; Sun City, South Africa in 1984. They were politically toxic. That’s why the late entry. Little Paulie’s machinations had nothing to do with it.

But—again—I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how the movie presents Freddie’s day, July 13, 1985.

He gets up, feeds his cats, goes out. To Wembley? For the afternoon concert? No. According to the movie, this is the day Freddie finally tracks down Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker), with whom he would spend the rest of his life. In the movie they meet at a raucous party in ... 1980? Freddie’s naughty, Jim gives him a dressing down, Freddie acts the chastened schoolboy and is intrigued. Then he spends five years or whatever tracking Jim down. And he finally does it on this day: July 13, 1985.

And then Freddie goes on to Wembley to make rock history.

Actually, no. Though Freddie and Jim haven’t seen each other in however many years, they’re immediately a couple. Like that. So much so, that Freddie picks this day of all days to then visit his parents, stalwart immigrants, and to introduce Jim as his partner. And he’s not just introducing Jim; he’s coming out to his family. And guess what? They’re immediately accepting of him! Because of course they are. Father hugs son, mother is teary-eyed, son promises mom he’ll blow here a kiss during his performance, and everything is made right on this day, July 13, 1985, just before Freddie heads to Wembley for an afternoon concert to make rock ‘n’ roll history.

In the audience, I kept shaking my head.

Oh, and then the movie implies that no one gave a shit about starving kids in Africa until Queen started playing. Not sure who’s more insulted by that: the other bands at Live Aid, or all of us.

Is this the real life
The tagline for “Bohemian Rhapsody” is: 

FEARLESS
LIVES
FOREVER

Which I misread at first. I read “lives” as a noun rather than a verb—as in “He led a fearless life.” Either way, it doesn’t quite fit. Freddie was fearless in being flamboyant and original. But he was still a gay Parsi kid named Farrokh Bulsara who spent most of his life hiding his heritage and his homosexuality. Apparently he wanted to both stand out and fit in. That’s the wish of most of us, really. That’s where the dilemma is, but the movie makes a muddle of it.

The movie’s a muddle generally. You wait for the great songs (“Killer Queen,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Somebody to Love,” “Crazy Little Thing”), and you thrill at Rami Malek’s dead-on impersonation of Freddie’s unique, strutting stage presence. But in between these moments, we get conflicts that are either cliché or contradictory.

So there’s the fictional record exec (Mike Myers, in a nod to “Wayne’s World”’s Queen scene) who can’t see the point of a six-minute single 10 years after “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Hey Jude” broke the barrier. He gets his. So there’s the nefarious underling who pulls Freddie away from family and friends and toward decadence. (Pull Freddie toward decadence? From what I’ve heard, he leapt.) And they can’t even do this right. When the schemer, Paul, assistant to manager John Reid (Aidan Gillen of “Game of Thrones”/”The Wire”), tells Reid that maybe Freddie should break from the band for a solo career, and then Reid suggests this to Freddie in the back of a limo, Freddie is so incensed by the suggestion that he fires Reid on the spot. So Paul becomes the manager. Then Freddie agrees to do the very thing he fired Reid for even suggesting. Why? How did Paul change his mind?

I don’t know how many times Freddie talks up the fans in the back row, the ones who don’t fit in, the freaks who are different—as he was, called “Paki” (for his heritage) and “Bucky” (for his teeth). And yet what are some of their biggest songs? Jock anthems: “We Will Rock You,” “We are the Champions,” “Another One Bites the Dust.” Each has been adopted by some sports team or another. The World Series-winning 1981 LA Dodgers even performed a horrible rendition of “We are the Champions” for posterity. I would’ve loved 10 seconds on that incongruity. Seeing jocks singing it at a futbol match: “These arsholes would’ve beaten me up at St. Pete’s.” Something.

Here’s the biggest question: Where did it all come from? The singing, the talent, the strutting? To the movie, it’s just suddenly there. He’s a shy kid working baggage at Heathrow and admiring a band, Smile, who’ve just lost their lead singer, Tim Staffel; and then he’s onstage and he’s Freddie. In real life, according to Slate, they all knew each other much earlier:

Mercury, who had drifted through other groups as a keyboard player, always wanted to be the band’s lead singer, sometimes shouting, “If I was your singer, I’d show you how it was done,” from the audience and already offering unsolicited advice on image and performance, telling them, according to May, “You’re not dressing right, you’re not addressing the audience properly. There’s always opportunity to connect.” In fact, by the time Staffell quit, May, Taylor, and Mercury (then still Bulsara) were sharing an apartment, so when the vacancy arose, Mercury was the natural person to fill it. 

I love the thought of Freddie shouting from the audience. Would that we could’ve seen it.

Is this just fantasy
Great casting. I’ll give it that. Dead on. Everyone looks the part. 

But “Bohemian Rhapsody” doesn’t live up to its tagline. It’s not fearless. It’s a typical rock biopic. It’s ordinary. It’s what Freddie wasn’t.