This long-awaited biopic of the "Queen" frontman, Freddie Mercury, né Farrokh Bulsara, tells the story of the young singer/songwriter's struggle with his own cultural identity, sexuality, and his meteoric rise to fame and popularity. While Sacha Baron Cohen was the first pick for Mercury, his own Mercurian refusal to play by the rules and be involved with this watered down telling of the story led to the masterful performance of the truly gifted Rami Malek.

This film, though tamer than the real-life Mercury story to avoid a Hard R rating in the U.S., does a good job of wrestling with issues of family, self-love, human sexuality, sexual ethics, and friendship.

Theologically, it calls attention to the harm of preaching hate, no matter the religion, as it causes people to question their worth in God's eyes and in the eyes of oneself. This kind of harm then carries into all aspects of life, and poisons all decisions. At the turn of Mercury's life, when he has realized he is sick and that his life has emptily sent away all the people he cares about, he asks his indulgent advisor Paul how you know when something has gone fully rotten to the core, and calls him a fruit fly, sending him away saying there is nothing left for him to feast upon. He then works to reconnect with those he had alienated, and connects with family and the band, also realizing he can love himself enough to be with the partner he had until his death, Jim Hutton. Though the pace of this film is slower than one might expect, the second and third acts will have you both singing and crying.