Michael
The most untalented take on the most talented artist.
After years of development, disputes, reshoots, court cases and problems, a biopic about Michael Jackson directed by Antoine Fuqua finally hits screens worldwide, with Jaafar Jackson in the role of the King of Pop.
The film covers a fragment of Michael Jackson’s life and his family between 1967 and 1988, ending with the moment he goes on the “Bad” tour. We get a brief look at the early days of the Jackson 5 and the beginning of Michael’s solo career, the moment he becomes the biggest star on the planet. The film touches on how he recorded his first two albums, how he interacted with his family and his father, and how he worked towards becoming the most successful artist of his time. And honestly, that’s pretty much it.
Michael was many things, but he was never boring. Somehow, this film manages to turn the story of one of the most fascinating and electrifying artists in music history into something dull. Because despite looking expensive, rich, bright and extravagant, the film feels completely empty.
It is structured in a very fragmented way, as if entire chunks of it were cut out. Instead of a proper narrative, we just watch disconnected fragments of the pop icon’s life. The transition from Michael’s childhood to his adulthood feels oddly handled. Some scenes are inserted awkwardly, just to deliver historical facts, without any proper build-up. Things in this film simply happen because the plot requires them to happen, or because they are written in history books. And in doing so, the film misses something essential that makes biopics work in the first place — a core question or conflict that everything revolves around and is meaningfully explored.
For example, in the Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere, the story builds towards the creation of his most experimental and interesting work. Here, the central idea seems to be Michael’s relationship with his father and his attempt to separate himself from his family’s influence, but it feels so caricatured and oddly underdeveloped that it never becomes a meaningful backbone of the film.
What we get instead is a movie without substance. It’s just a Wikipedia-style recap of facts. We are not really invited into the psychology of Michael, his family, or his father — who is presented in the most one-dimensional “tyrant” way possible. Everything we watch is a glossy surface, and characters repeatedly state, every few minutes, how special Michael is (which we already know and don’t need a reminder), while Michael keeps saying that “he needs to break free”.
Michael Jackson was, first and foremost, a human being — extremely great, extremely complex, extremely layered. What we get here instead feels like a promotional brochure or a family home video, rather than a serious biographical study.
And somehow, in a $200 million film — the same budget as Project Hail Mary, which reportedly used no green screen and delivered a full space odyssey to IMAX screens — they manage to deliver shockingly bad CGI. The animal animation, especially a monkey, looks awful. Concert and crowd scenes feel obviously artificial. The whole thing looks artificial as hell, and it constantly pulls you out of the story. At times it feels less like a serious biopic and more like a Disney movie.
Jaafar Jackson clearly tried hard, and while it doesn’t always fully land, his portrayal of Michael Jackson is, overall, a success. I cannot say the same about Colman Domingo, who heavily overplays Joseph Jackson, turning him into a caricature instead of a living, complex person driven by ambition and control over his children. Miles Teller also does not leave much of an impression. The rest of the cast blends into the background — competent, but forgettable.
In the end, the best part of the film is Michael Jackson’s music itself — music we can already listen to anywhere, anytime. Because it is bigger than this film, bigger than the script, and possibly even bigger than Michael himself. It is part of history.
This film is not.
5/10
