Michael Movie Review:
It was the halftime show at the 1993 Super Bowl. After an elaborate buildup involving impersonators, Texas switch, and fireworks, Michael Jackson was launched onto the stage through a trap door on the floor. He stood motionless for two whole minutes. The crowd went wild, nonstop cheering, euphoric screaming, people almost passing out from excitement, all before even a single beat dropped. And that wasn’t even the biggest stage moment of his career. How do you make someone like that look boring? Antoine Fuqua’s Michael has achieved the impossible, and for that alone, it has great cinematic value.
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Jaafar Jackson, Nia Long, Juliano Valdi, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, Laura Harrier
Biopics of famous musicians have set their own standards, especially those about a singer who died years ago. We know not to expect an historically accurate or a cinematic passion project. The best we are getting is a script approved by every single agent, corporate entity, artistic collaborator, and the singer’s own estate. There is sanitisation, and then there is a botched brain surgery, which renders the patient in a catatonic state; the latter seems to have happened with Michael. There is some entertainment value in seeing Jaafar Jackson’s impeccable impersonation of the King of Pop, with the several 1:1 recreations of Michael Jackson’s music videos and stage performances. It was amazing listening to his greatest hits played in the theatre, but it is undeniable that the original is vastly more entertaining and energetic. After setting up Michael Jackson’s early childhood and the Jackson Five years, the film glides from one music video to another. Sure, we see how news about real gang violence inspired him to make ‘Beat It’, and how zombie films informed the aesthetics of ‘Thriller’, but we hardly understand the mind behind these creations. The iconic moment when Michael Jackson first performed the Moonwalk arrives as it does in one of those several compilation videos on YouTube, as a passing moment. We have no idea how he arrived at his philosophy on music, choreography, or fashion. The legendary rivalry between Michael Jackson and Prince is reduced to one throwaway line. There is no mention of the countless black artists who inspired the Moonwalk or how he uses on-stage theatrics, like specially designed levitation shoes, to excite the audience.
We see how Michael Jackson was abused and exploited by his father. But it is probably because it was well documented how Michael and his siblings were vocal about their childhood trauma in interviews in their later years. You also wonder why everyone else in the film, including several agents, record labels, and network heads (famous protectors of artistic freedom as observed throughout the history of the modern music industry), comes off as extremely amiable and supportive. There are clearly signs of the film being muffled, and you could see it in the painfully bland dialogue. For example, we see Michael Jackson return home after his plastic surgery, and we see him confronted by his father; it could have gone several ways, considering the sour relationship between the two, but barely any reaction or lines are exchanged. Every time a scene ends, we are left wondering what it was supposed to convey, other than to capture isolated moments in the singer’s life. The film also conveniently ends with the 80s, with a laughably bad tagline: ‘His story continues’. It is either a sequel bait or the smoothest way to avoid showing the dark years of Michael Jackson’s legacy, including the isolation at the Neverland ranch and the pedophilia allegations. It is not that they should have addressed the allegations, but whatever they chose to make doesn’t seem to have any thought, let alone positive intent, other than to exploit his brand once more. Instead of humanising a legend, the film alienates him further. The ‘Smooth Criminal’ is whoever approved the final version of this lobotomised and neutered script. Even with all the problems, when you watch the film in a packed theatre with five Michael Jackson impersonators, people cheering for even the pet chimp, Bubbles, and his timeless music blasting through the hall, it becomes clear how the legacy, even decades after his death, is so big that not even time, controversies, or a bad film can beat it.