Allow me to put this into perspective.
Bohemian Rhapsody holds an aggregate score of 49% on Metacritic. On Rotten Tomatpes, 61% of critics gave it a “fresh” rating with an aggregate score of 6.1/10.
Malek’s face has become entwined with the awards success of this easily malleable film. It’s well adored by less artistically inclined audiences, and separating the snob cinephile from myself, I can understand and respect why. It’s sensationalist, bordering on bombastic, approach to its subject is indeed a rather (however superficially) stimulating experience, but as a film, with its merits assessed critically, it is not very good at all.
Malek stands as the best part of this middling, listless film, and the thing is, this isn’t even middle tier work for him. He’s a good actor, but to win on your first try for below middling work over better contenders that were nominated (for me, Cooper, Dafoe or even Bale would have been better winners) and literally handfuls of better contenders that weren’t (Foster, Considine, Hawke, Reilly to name a few) is very bad to say the least.
He’ll age fairly badly with very little doubt in my eyes.
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