I don't feel that 'Hot Space' is a bad album at all. I think the overall negative reaction to it is three-fold : at the time of its release, some of the funk/disco songs on it made Freddie's overt sexuality a little too obvious to many listeners (it really pushed it in their faces this time around, not just skirting the edges); listeners didn't want Queen to take the funk/disco sound any further past the novelty of "Another One Bites the Dust", and wanted them to go back to emphasizing Brian May's guitar work; and a few of the songs on the album are simply average, not warranting a lot of radio airplay.
But Queen were one of the few bands beyond the Beatles to REALLY vary up their sound and cover a lot of musical styles, and 'Hot Space' is a two-thirds successful attempt at doing that in my book. The only truly weak studio album from Queen during their years with Freddie, in my opinion, was 'The Miracle', which was too fluffy and weak in songwriting. It's the only official Queen album I refuse to own. 'Hot Space' deserves reevaluation from fans. Take away the homophobia in this country surrounding the album, and you'll see it wasn't bad at all even if it was their weakest album to-date at that point.
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My rating of the album's got nothing to do with Frederick's sexuality. It's related to the material being sub-par compared to what they'd done prior to that. But I still prefer 'Hot Space' to 'The Works', 'A Kind of Magic' and 'The Miracle'.
It's not that bad.
Hot Space and all the following albums just demonstrate how bad the 80's were in terms of commercial music production for rock/guitar-oriented music, and any attempts at the time to sound current have resulted in recordings that very quickly sounded dated. It is a shame they went down the rabbit hole of using every latest gadget, but obviously they were far from alone and you can't really blame them. But just imagine thinking clunky programmed electronic drums and bass were better than the real thing recorded in a professional studio!