Bohemian Rhapsody Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

4. Bryan Singer's Clumsy Direction

The movie of course had a rickety production with Bryan Singer being dismissed from the back-end of principal photography due to his failure to turn up on set.

Dexter Fletcher took over shooting and editing the movie, and though it's impossible to tell exactly who filmed what, the end product feels cut from the same clunky cloth throughout.

Singer's going to shoulder most of the blame here as he probably should, because there are so many fundamentally heavy-handed and groan-worthy creative choices.

From a terrible press conference sequence in which Singer probes Mercury's sexuality with sledgehammer-subtlety to obnoxious use of "Under Pressure" as the singer approaches a personal crossroads, it's all laid on with a comical thickness that again just reeks of pure biopic formula.

Nobody's saying the movie needed to be flat and "gritty", but ultimately the abundance of glossy CGI scene transitions and text flying around the screen feels embarrassingly conventional if not flat-out lazy.