IT’S been a long and bumpy road for us to get a biopic about the incomparable Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. The result is a curious contradiction in terms, at once exciting and pedestrian, jumping from energetic re-enactments to overstated mythologising to soapy melodrama on a whim. As much as it feels like a celebration, it’s also a fairly sanitised one.

The focus here is not on Mercury’s entire cradle-to-grave story but rather the first 15 years of his illustrious career from the day he sashays up to musicians Brian May (Gwilym Lee) and Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) who are in need of a new lead singer, until the legendary Band Aid performance that bookends the narrative.

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A troubled production (including a switch of director from the fired Bryan Singer to Dexter Fletcher) shows on the surface, if not evident through its very construct. It feels disjointed and uneven as it heads down music biopic roads well and truly travelled.

Those looking for a warts-and-all portrayal are in for a bit of a let down; there is an admirable attempt at exploring how he embraced his sexuality in his publicly loved persona and how it conversely affected his personal relationships, not least with his eventual wife Mary (affectingly played by Lucy Boynton) whom he remained friends with until his death.

But at the same time it oddly plays down the more outlandish aspects, including his relationship with personal manager Paul Prenter (Allen Leech), while it muddles the timeline of his Aids diagnosis to neatly fit into a more convenient mould (the Live Aid concert took place two years before he was actually diagnosed).

Debauchery is far from on the set list of this particular biopic. You can almost hear the seal of approval sticker being slapped on to the product from the remaining Queen members.

And yet, for all its faults, there’s enough going on in Bohemian Rhapsody that grabs the attention. This mostly falls at the feet of Rami Malek (best known for TV’s Mr Robot), who goes above and beyond in taking on the daunting task of portraying one of the most iconic music figures of the 20th century, elevating some iffy material with a boundlessly passionate performance.

While the looks and mannerisms are absolutely spot on, Malek also imbues him with a real sense of humanity in the off-stage scenes and an attention-grabbing gusto when it comes to belting out seemingly impossible notes across a proposed four octave range. The decision was made to mix the voices of Malek, Mercury and impersonator Marc Martel. The gamble paid off; the voice and Malek’s physicality showcase what made the man such a commander of attention.

The music itself is as peerless as it is iconic. It’s a fun piece of look-at-me flamboyance as the soundtrack gleefully hits the play button on those famous songs, from the titular ground-breaker to the foot-stomping We Will Rock You.

It succumbs to that standard trope of the light-bulb moment when a famous tune starts to take shape. Nevertheless there’s something enjoyable about watching the band members work together to create the melodic, genre-mixing magic that took the music industry by storm.

Everything builds towards the famous Live Aid concert in 1985 and the film’s shrewdest choice is to recreate it almost in its entirety.

If not forgiving and forgetting its issues that have led up to it, the sequence goes a long way to making the journey of this lamentably safe biopic feel worth it and to reinforce what made Queen an enduring, anthemic band and Mercury such a supreme musical force whom audiences took to their heart.