<P> The chief rock and pop critic of The Guardian, Alexis Petridis, described the film's portrayal of Mercury as "sanitised," writing "Bohemian Rhapsody is a film that plays so fast and loose with the truth, it ends up seeming faintly ridiculous: you start out nitpicking about minor chronological errors...and end up with your jaw on the floor ." The newspaper's film critic, Steve Rose, described the film as a "rock slog with a troubling moralistic subtext". </P> <P> Although praising Rami Malek's performance, David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a grade of "D +", criticizing Singer's direction and calling the film "royally embarrassing", writing, "Queen's music may have been unclassifiable, but their movie is as trite and textbook as it gets...It's par for the course in this terrible and self - indulgent piece of revisionist history, where the legend is always prioritized over the truth, even when the truth was surely far more interesting ." For The Spectator, Jasper Rees described Bohemian Rhapsody as "a succession of predigested clichés," writing "you are overcome by the sapping impression that almost nothing happened the way it's being presented," citing in particular the timing of Mercury's AIDS diagnosis . Rees concluded, "The costumes and wigs are splendid, and the songs are still up to snuff . But this homage to a showman is more famine than feast ." </P>

Who's starring in the new movie bohemian rhapsody