Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

From Mark McLaughlin, who had brought us other documentaries like Van Halen: The Early Years and Look up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, we also receive an hour long chronological look of the beginnings and rise of Classic Rock legends Queen. Released in 2004 with a slew of other unofficial Queen documentaries, while Becoming Queen surely had the most appealing DVD cover art of the bunch, I'm not so sure the program stands out from the crowd.

DVD Chapters:

1. Opening
2. Early Days
3. 1984
4. Smile
5. Mercury Rising
6. Smiles Change To a Frown
7. The Rise of the Monarchy
8. Trident Studios
9. Regal Reign
10. Fall From Grace
11. Crown of Glory
12. Losing a Legend
13. Tribute
14. Coda

This documentary tells the story from the very beginnings through a main narration by Carlos Larkin and archived band interviews and new interviews from friends of Queen, and other people who had either known the band members or in the business.

Little info about Freddie Mercury's previous bands Ibex and Wreckage mostly due to the fact that they have never attained that level of professionally recording any of their music. Becoming Queen provides interviews with Ken Testi and Mike Bersin who are two out of the three original members of Ibex and Wreckage. They tell the story of how their band was really second choice for lead singer Freddie Mercury because he was campaigning himself to become singer of another band, Smile at the time.

Smile was the band of his friend Tim Staffell, who had played bass and sand lead for the group. Smile was also a trio, and in addition to Staffell, there was guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, two future members of Queen. This documentary also features a new interview with Tim Staffell, who effectively illustrates how the stars slowly aligned to bring the band we know as Queen together in those early days in the late 1960s.

The hour long documentary focuses more than the first half hour of how the band did in fact become Queen. Through meshing of bands, a couple of personnel changes and heavy gigging. The recording history of the band and the huge global success they had achieved was very condensed and sort of glossed over with just a couple of stories here and there from others like J.J. Jackson who was one of the original MTV VJs, who had interviewed Freddie Mercury and the band in 1983. Of course there was some more detail with the recording of Bohemian Rhapsody and the A Night at the Opera album.

Yet having said this, it should be noted that this DVD had no license to include original Queen Music. Instead there are snippets here and there of generic rock music to accent the documentary. To have the music of Queen would have better illustrated the story and in my opinion was missed. There is only one Queen performance heard which was Tavaszi Szel, a traditional Hungarian folk song during one of their shows from 1986.

The inclusion of Queen's album cover art and rare pictures of the band performing was a nice touch and helped tell the story. Others that were interviewed were Mike Read who is mostly known as one of the hosts of the British TV show, Top of the Pops. There is also Doug Puddifoot, a photographer who took pictures of the band even before bass player John Deacon joined the group.

The DVD features two bonus features. The first is a Photo Album of many rare Queen photos, all were used during the documentary, but here they are all lumped into one slideshow while listening to the monotonous DVD theme music.
The other "bonus feature" is an advertisement of Brian May's signature guitar series. This is an odd choice for a bonus feature.

This DVD is mainly for Queen fans, I think others would fall asleep understandably. For the Queen fanatic, I do not see any reason why it wouldn't be a good idea to add this to their collection. Don't let the fact that Freddie Mercury's name is misspelled on the front cover as "Freddy", this DVD is pretty good.



~~~~~~~~~~~~For more Queen CD Epinions from Scapp70~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Queen
Queen II
Sheer Heart Attack
A Night At The Opera
A Night At The Opera - DVD Audio
A Day At The Races
News of the World
Jazz
Live Killers
The Game – DVD-Audio
Flash Gordon Soundtrack
Hot Space
The Works
A Kind Of Magic
Live Magic
At The BBC
Innuendo
Headlong (CD Single)
Too Much Love Will Kill You (CD Single)
Classic Queen
Heaven For Everyone (CD Single)
Anyway The Wind Blows by Pomeriggi Musicali Wind Orchestra Music
The Queen Symphony
Greatest Hits III
Crown Jewels
Stone Cold Queen – A Tribute
Queen Rocks
Greatest Hits
Queen On Fire At The Bowl
Killer Queen – A Tribute To Queen
A Night At The Opera – CD & DVD (30th Anniversary)
Stone Cold Classics



Queen DVDs

Queen - Greatest Video Hits 1
Queen - Greatest Video Hits 2
Queen Paul Rodgers - Return Of The Champions
Queen - Magic Moments: Unauthorized
Becoming Queen
Queen: A Night At The Opera - DVD Audio
Queen: The Game - DVD Audio
Queen: A Night At The Opera - 30th Anniversary CD & DVD
Queen: We Will Rock You - DTS




Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day