Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
When you look at the end credits of "Michael," you'll notice a lot of Michael Jackson's family members were the executive producers. It would not be farfetched to think they dictated the content of Michael Jackson's life story in this biopic and the do's and don'ts. Regardless of their aims to present a sanitized, holier-than-thou Michael Jackson, they have not avoided some notable characteristics of the biggest pop music superstar of all time. "Michael" is a bedazzling entertainment, a showstopper of a movie when it comes to Michael Jackson performing his pop hits and that is most of the movie. If you like Michael Jackson's world-renown music, you'll enjoy hearing the Dolby soundtrack upping the ante on the bass line of hits like "Thriller" and "Billie Jean." You might even want to jump up and down the aisle while watching it.
"Michael" begins with the singer ready to storm the stage with his electrifying song, "Bad." Then we shift to young Michael (played by 12-year-old Juliano Valdi) staring outside his window at kids playing on the yard in Gary, Indiana. The stern, no-nonsense patriarch of the family, Joseph Jackson (Colman Domingo, bearing an uncanny resemblance), tells Michael to sing with his brothers and prepare themselves to go on tour. Week after week, Joseph preps them, being their serious manager, and when Michael refuses to practice after already performing on stage, dad whips out his belt and hits Michael. We see a few Jackson 5 numbers performed including my favorite, "ABC," and a Motown rep showing up to see the incredible Mike (of course, the never-satisfied Joseph makes it clear that their singing pitch needs work).
The film swiftly moves to an older Michael, now presumably an adult although you wouldn't know from him still living at the parents' home in a room full of stuffed animals and Peter Pan toys and books. Michael does make one major adult decision - he wants to break free of his father and become a solo act. Joseph won't have it, asking Michael to participate in a reunion of the Jackson 5 on a world tour because "the brand is family." The movie progresses with the firing of Joseph as Michael's manager and the singer releasing the most popular album by a solo artist ever, the resounding success of "Thriller" (which also became a diverting 15-minute short film directed by John Landis). Aside from "Thriller" and other classic cuts such as "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Bad," Jaafar Jackson (Michael's actual nephew) astoundingly recreates all the moves and that darn moonwalk with grace - he is a replica of the real thing. His smile is perfect and his life is seemingly perfect except for that fact that he feels he needs a nose job. There is also the brief foray into his vitiligo, a skin condition where he lost pigmentation on parts of his body. Rumors at the time were that Michael was trying to turn white when that wasn't the case at all.
"Michael" does deal with the father-son friction as its main focus, and only slightly with Michael's man-child fascination with childlike things. We witness scenes of Michael turning the Jackson home into a zoo with a giraffe, the chimp Bubbles (seemingly done with CGI), and alpacas (some of this made me laugh, especially seeing Michael walking down the street with an alpaca). But there are fleetingly tender moments where Michael visits sickly children in hospitals, perhaps an attempt to show his more human, compassionate side.
Directed with some style and panache by Antoine Fuqua and featuring spectacular choreography of Michael's dancing on stage, "Michael"is worthwhile for any fans of the universal superstar. Not unlike other recent musical biopics such as "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Rocketman," it is bound together by the expected cliches with little to no interest on Michael as someone beyond an iconic superstar. There are micro-hints here of something beyond his iconic energy but not quite what I hoped for. The myth, the legend is always pitch perfect on stage, ready to take on the world and try to make it a better place. In that human spirit of optimism, it would have been fitting to conclude with Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" than "Bad." We already know he's bad.
1 comment:
While I like the film as it was, I actually wonder whether a better opportunity was missed; the biggest issue with Michael is that it does not just show HOW people deified Michael Jackson… it actively deifies him itself.
There is a huge difference between portraying a cultural phenomenon and endorsing it.
A more thoughtful biopic would show how millions of fans came to see him as larger than life. Instead, the film seems to adopt that perspective wholesale.
Michael is not presented as a complicated artist with strengths, flaws, contradictions, collaborators, influences and limitations. He is presented as a near perfect figure who excels at everything.
The best singer.
The best dancer.
The best songwriter.
The best producer.
The creative force behind virtually every aspect of his success.
By the end you would think he single handedly created every song, every performance, every innovation and every career milestone entirely on his own.
The reality is that Michael was extraordinarily talented, but he was also part of a massive creative ecosystem. Producers, engineers, musicians, arrangers, choreographers, managers, executives and countless collaborators helped shape the work.
A great biopic would have explored those relationships and shown how all those moving parts came together to create something special.
Instead, everyone around him feels like they are just there to tell us how amazing Michael is.
That is another major problem. Everything is incredibly surface level. Almost every character feels like a one dimensional Cliff Notes version of a real person. They show up, fulfill a narrative function, and disappear. Nobody has much interiority, complexity or agency outside of how they relate to Michael. They are not portrayed as people. They are props in the story of Michael Jacksons greatness.
What makes a great biopic is not convincing me someone was a genius. We already know Michael Jackson was a genius. What makes a great biopic is showing me the human being behind the legend and the world around them.
Instead Michael often feels less like a biography and more like a canonization. I walked away entertained, but I did not walk away feeling like I understood Michael Jackson, his family, his collaborators, or his life any better than I did before.
Honestly I think the Rotten Tomatoes split perfectly sums up the movie. Critics and audiences were judging it by different standards.
Critics were asking “Does this work as a film? Does it work as a biopic? Is it well written, insightful, and dramatically compelling?”
Audiences were asking “Did I have fun watching Michael Jackson perform? Did I enjoy the music? Was I entertained for a few hours?”
Those are not the same question and they are not mutually exclusive. A movie can be entertaining and still be mediocre as a piece of storytelling. Likewise a movie can be artistically excellent and not be everyones idea of a good time.
For me Michael falls squarely into the first category. I had fun. I was entertained. But as a biopic it felt shallow, sanitized and far less interesting than the real story it was supposedly telling.
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