I’m going off of memory here, but I think most of his complaints centered around how he thought the film depicted Mercury’s sexuality as if it were a problem that Queen had to overcome. A lot of other critics made similar complaints. I guess the idea that someone can both be gay and self destructive never occurred to them.
It's been a while since I watched it, but the film IIRC has Mercury at first claiming he's bisexual but everyone (his wife included) know he's a closeted gay man and it's played as everyone all but outright telling Freddy "just come out already; we don't care". And because he's so hung up on not being gay, Allen Leech's character uses that to basically drag Mercury into the world of degeneracy where he eventually contracts AIDS and burns Freddy, when Freddy leaves him*.
*And yes, I know the film took massive liberties with the truth, especially with how they rewrote history to make Leech's character a literal evil predatory gay villain complete with mustache for the sake of a narrative that made Mercury out to be a saint. Which is also why NO ONE had any high expectations for the film, BTW. The film was in Limbo Hell for over a decade because of the fact that Mercury's family wanting to basically whitewash Mercury's hedonism (in real life, Mercury was bisexual and basically fucked anything that moved and Leech's character basically was one of the few people who could keep him focused on music) and this basically caused Sasha Baron Cohn to be fired from the project as SBC wanted a warts and all bio-pic which went into graphic detail towards Freddy's drug abuse and willingness to fuck anyone and everyone that moved.
Adding to this, was the fact that the rest of the members of Queen explicitly made their involvement in the film and the band's music in said film, contingent on them having equal script approval and this allowed them as well, to basically rewrite the past and create a new narrative for the band/Mercury's life. One which downplays Mercury as the band's sole creative genius and allowing them to basically insert themselves into key moments of Mercury's creative process so that they get credit for the band's various creative breakthroughs/songs. And in turn creates the image of Mercury as a sexually confused genius who needed Queen more than the band needed him, since they "protected" him from predatory influences and helped nurture his talent and see it blossom. Which Mercury's family went along with, since it was a trade-off necessary for them to sanitize Mercury's darker impulses for the masses.
**They made Leech's character the villain of the piece because the guy he plays was long dead of AIDS and basically couldn't do anything to refute their claims of villainy. Ironically, Leech (when he did interviews to promote the film) argued that his character wasn't really a villain and saw the character as a hanger on type who loved Mercury and only did him dirty because he was afraid of being rejected and that his act of outing Mercury, ultimately ended up allowing Mercury to finally be himself without the fear it held over him.
www.escapistmagazine.com
