Movie Review: Michael

Antoine Fuqua’s Michael, a biopic about music icon Michael Jackson, is an “and then” movie. It is a movie made up entirely of scenes and sequences strung together solely to get us to the next scene or sequence, yet without any connective tissue. Its essential breakdown is: scene one happens, and then scene two happens, and then scene three happens, and so on. It is simply a series of things that happened in Michael Jackson’s life, yet it fails to have anything meaningful to say or thematic throughline.

Michael is a glossy, fan-first, scatter-shot portrait of the King of Pop. It starts in the 60s with a young Michael (played by Juliano Valdi) and the Jackson 5, which takes up about the first thirty minutes of the film. It establishes that Michael is immensely talented and that his father, Joseph (Colman Domingo), is a real son-of-a-bitch, pushing his children to their limits and even abusing them, especially Michael, with the sole goal of getting famous. This section of the film covers roughly five years in less than 30 minutes, flying by on the coattails of Jackson 5 hits. Even with the evil actions of Joseph, you can immediately tell that Michael is going to be a breezy musical biopic that wants to showcase the music and the artist and not much else.

Michael focuses most of its time on adult Michael Jackson, played by Jafaar Jackson, Michael Jackson’s actual nephew. It starts with the release of Off the Wall, his breakout solo album, and goes through the Thriller album, which became (and still is) the biggest-selling album of all time, and finishes off during his 1988 tour for his Bad album, where the film’s final set piece takes place as he performs “Bad” to a sold-out Wembley Stadium in London. From Off the Wall to the Bad tour, we see all the iconic moments from Jackson’s life that have made him a legend: the creation and inspiration of iconic songs like “Beat It”, the Thriller music video, his hair catching on fire when making a Pepsi commercial, the exotic animals he had at his house, including a monkey named Bubbles, and the Moonwalk. It was like watching a Michael Jackson greatest moments collection rather than a film about one of the most famous men in modern history.

Michael doesn’t bother with establishing any other characters besides the titular pop star, and saying the film gives Michael any depth is a stretch. His mother, played wonderfully by Nia Long, is reduced to watching movies with Michael and being timid when Joseph is angry, until she gets her redemption moment in the third act. His brothers are afterthoughts, even during the Jackson 5 sequence. Joseph is a one-note greed monster, and Domingo, an actor I generally love, is reduced to a bad make-up job and a terrible wig. Michael is portrayed through a very kind lens, showing him as a seemingly flawless, creative, uber-talented human. Jafaar Jackson gives a decent performance in a role that seems almost impossible to play. I can’t say I bought his dramatic chops, but during the dance sequences and musical bits, he was spectacular. The “Beat It” scene was one of the film’s highlights, and the closing “Bad” number had the theater rattling. Michael has some good moments, but the iconic songs carry them, and for a musical biopic to be good, the film needs to be more than just the great songs.

Michael doesn’t tell us anything about Michael Jackson that we don’t already know or show us anything we haven’t already seen or can’t look up on YouTube. There is no additional insight into these iconic moments; they happen and happen lazily. During the scene when they are making the “Thriller” video, one of the greatest music videos ever made, rather than show us anything new and insightful about the making of the video, the sequence is reduced to a montage of Jackson watching horror movies and then basically a shot-by-shot recreation of the video. This is the case with most of these scenes throughout the film, and it is frustrating to watch the laziness on display. You can save yourself some time and look up Michael Jackson’s life on Wikipedia while listening to his albums or watching his music videos, and that would probably be a better experience than watching Michael.

TL;DR Review of Michael

• A paint-by-numbers musical biopic about Michael Jackson.
• Adds nothing to Michael’s legacy and gives us no additional inside information.
• Very fan-friendly. The music is great, as expected.
• Lacks character depth despite a few solid performances from Jafaar Jackson and Nia Long.
• You would be better served by just watching Michael Jackson’s music videos and concerts on YouTube.

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