Freddie Mercury would regard Bohemian Rhapsody as a “fair cop,” Queen guitarist Brian May said. The biopic, which opens in theaters on Nov. 2, stars Rami Malek as Mercury.

“I’ve seen it hundreds of times now, in fragments and eventually coming together, and it still gets me,” May told Classic Rock in a recent interview. “It’s very emotional. It’s all about Freddie. Yes, we are in there, but the story is about Freddie and that was always the aim.”

He added that  “obviously Freddie is so precious to us. One of the great breakthroughs early on was screenwriter Peter Morgan saying, ‘This is a film about family.’ It’s all about the stuff that happens in a family – some good, some bad, the going away, the searching for independence and then the nurture of the family.”

Asked if he thought Mercury would approve of the film, May said, “I think he would have felt it was a fair cop. It shows all his greatness and all his fallibility and insecurity – the whole bit. I think it shows him very truthfully and not sycophantically, but in a way that appreciates his talent.”

He described the singer as “unique.” “I’ve never met anybody like Freddie in my life, before or since, and it’s probably not going to happen again,” he said.

In our review of the film, UCR calls Bohemian Rhapsody “an entertaining movie, and one ultimately driven by Malek’s inspired performance, great music and Mercury’s larger-than-life story.”