This morning the PGA (Producers Guild of America) enlightened us with their 10 nominees for their Best Picture prize. Suffice to say. what we have on our hands here is a good old fashioned elitist freakout over "Bohemian Rhapsody" getting an nod. For me, without a doubt, the more appalling nominee is "Crazy Rich Asians," which was most likely included because of the all-Asian cast and the fact that it made a lot of money. The hatred towards "Bohemian Rhapsody" stems from the "de-queering" of Freddy Mercury in the film, which i find to be a mute point considering the film did what it set out to do: entertain. These critics, which include IndieWire's David Ehrlich, The New York Times' Kyle Buchanan and Variety's Guy Lodge, would like to maintain the pressure on ‘Rhapsody’ despite the fact that “Crazy Rich Asians” was a far more middling film and is now destined to become the worst Best Picture nominee since 2011’s "Extremely Loud and Incredible Close."
Back on 11.30.18 I wrote:
You can’t escape the fact that “Bohemian Rhapsody” has been such an immense success with audiences nationwide. The Queen biopic has delivered great numbers at the box-office with close to $155M grossed domestically thus far — cue in all the Hollywood execs greenlighting rock biopics left and right. Not to mention ‘Rhapsody’ garnering a rare A grade on CinemaScore and an astonishing 8.4 rating on IMDB (based on 127k votes).
This is all fine and dandy, but the reviews from critics were the complete oppoite. The movie has a mediocre 62% on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 320 reviews).
And so, despite the objections of MANY critics when it comes to the film’s treatment of Mercury’s sexuality, not to mention director Bryan Singer being a #MeToo poster boy, audiences are going nuts for it. You see, if you go beyond our online bubble and speak to people that don't invest their time on social media and, for that matter, aren't all that interested in it, and that is the majority of America, you will find the movie has won America's hearts.
I see this as a positive. This is moviegoing audiences sending a statement to the mob-mentality criticism that has been running rampant and out of control these last few years. A movie is a movie. Art can be separated from the artists and vice versa. Now, can the voting body over at the Academy do the same and approve of Singer's film by giving it an Oscar nomination?