Many biopics are just an excuse to place the viewer in the moment. Elements of great moviemaking such as character development and engaging dialogue are tossed by the wayside in favour of providing a big budget immersive "fly on the wall" experience for the viewing public. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is all that and more. Rami Malek's performance is electrifying and thoroughly believable, even though he has hardly any memorable scenes or lines in the entire movie. Essentially he won the Oscar for being the best possible Freddie Mercury impersonator.
The first half of the movie is perfectly fine, if a bit simplistic. Freddie is presented as a fairly run of the mill rebel who rejects everything that his parents stand for. The truth is more complicated but it's the simplified Hollywood version, and that's OK. His relationship with Mary Austin is beautifully explored and is by far the best thing about the movie. Mike Myers makes an amusing cameo as an EMI executive, complete with the obligatory tongue-in-cheek "Wayne's World" reference. The second half descends into every "Behind the Music" episode and cliche that you're ever seen, and frequently insults one's intelligence. The most egregious scene is where Freddie brings Jim to meet his parents and brag about doing Live Aid. The tears flow on camera and every running conflict in the movie is resolved in preposterous fashion in the space of a few minutes. Freddie triumphantly declaring that he's doing good deeds and helping to heal the world (thus earning his father's acceptance) is simply grotesque in its arrogance considering the oft-cited criticism of Live Aid, i.e. that the real benefactors were the mega-rich musicians who got even richer thanks to the publicity they received from playing at the concert. The movie goes out of its way to (unintentionally, I assume) prove those critics right, seeing as the Live Aid set is the climactic scene that the whole movie builds toward, and is firmly presented as Queen's finest moment.
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