Michael

The hotly anticipated and hotly debated Michael Jackson biopic traces the rise and early career of the King of Pop (MJ’s nephew Jaafar Jackson in his screen debut) from child prodigy to enigmatic moonwalker.

First, let’s get the headline-making context out of the way. As has been heavily reported already, Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic underwent a chaotic behind-the-scenes journey before heading to the big screen. From last-minute reshoots to removing any hints of Jackson’s shocking child abuse allegations, it steers clear of any eyebrow-raising ethical conundrums. One can’t even blame the filmmakers for not addressing any moral greyness when Michael is backed by Jackson’s estate (with his era-defining song catalog, you'd better need that). Further, a 1994 settlement between Jackson and one of the accuser’s families came with a strict non-disclosure and confidentiality clause. It’s amusing how this legal fact in the public domain went beyond the producers before the third act had to be entirely rewritten and reshot. But once you have the context, you can expect what kind of sugary, sanitized biopic you’re stepping into. This shouldn’t seem surprising when some of the most acclaimed music biopics tend to smooth over the artist’s murky side. For instance, you wouldn’t find Straight Outta Compton delving into the time when rapper Dr. Dre physically assaulted journalist Dee Barnes at a rap party. Or you will find Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis sugarcoating the King’s abusive marriage to a much-younger Priscilla Presley. Even if you can digest such omissions and if you’re comfortable separating the art from the artist, Michael sadly still feels like a mixed bag.

This first chapter in a multi-biopic saga is not “Bad” but frustratingly one-note. Tracing MJ’s life from singing with his brothers as the Jackson 5 to building his own singular empire as a visionary popstar, Michael narrows its scope mostly to the 1980s. There’s still enough to explore in this timeline, from Jackson’s complicated relationship with his belt-whipping, money-hungry hustler father Joe Jackson (a terrifyingly brilliant Colman Domingo as a hateable villain) to the lonely genius’s furry companions (“friends, not pets”, our hero insists) like Bubbles the chimp, a python, a giraffe, and even a llama. The foot-thumping musical sequences are all preceded by conveniently placed Eureka moments as Jackson finds the inspiration for the gangster dances of “Beat It” from a newscast on gang violence. The campy terror of “Thriller” similarly stems from Jackson watching classic horrors on the telly. In this sense, Michael is less of a film but more of a “greatest hits” section of Jackson’s Wikipedia page. Playing out with as much flashy glitter as the popstar’s signature sequined gloves, Michael rarely allows its protagonist to step out of the “pop Jesus” shadow he was gifted/cursed with. Even the tender moments of vulnerability and the chuckle-inducing studio sessions are accompanied by a friend or collaborator remarking how exceptional Jackson has always been. When a music biopic is so fixated with the exceptionalism of the artist from the very start, you can’t help but crave more nuance. While Michael is not as hollow and formulaic as, say, a Bohemian Rhapsody (also produced by Michael’s Graham King), it still fails to creatively play with an overdone genre to the levels of surprisingly subversive and emotionally resonant biopics like the Elton John musical Rocketman or even the Robbie Williams-is-a-CGI-chimp romp Better Man.

Jaafar Jackson is convincingly exorcised with MJ’s spirit, making Michael a spectacle-worthy concert film. Despite Antoine Fuqua’s uninspired direction and John Logan’s sappy, clunky screenplay, where the film truly shines is in the leading man department. Acting and dancing in the shadow of his gargantuan uncle, Jaafar Jackson proves all the naysayers wrong with a top-class impersonation. Acing the head nods, the grunts, the screams, the moonwalks, the smiles, the gloved hand waves, Jaafar’s performance is what injects some life and energy into an otherwise emotionally detached and artificial narrative. Ultimately, Michael delivers your money’s worth when you see Jaafar swing his hips with the zombies of “Thriller” or proclaim how “Bad” he is at a 1989 London stadium show. This is indeed the closest we’ll come to witnessing Michael Jackson live on stage since his untimely passing in 2009. So, as a full-fledged concert film or an extended music video, Michael qualifies as fan service done right. Sadly, when the spotlights and smoke machines come to a halt, there’s not much to remember the film by. For a story that’s so obsessed with revealing an abusive father’s tendency to reduce his son into a moneymaking circus monkey, Michael sadly doesn’t give its titular hero much room to get off the stage and get in touch with “the man in the mirror”.