Review: Michael

“If I’m not here to receive these ideas, God might give ‘em to Prince.”

It’s fair to say, I think, that we’re a few years removed from the peak of the musician biopic as a going concern in modern Hollywood. This isn’t a declaration of extinction (or even endangerment) by any means, the musician biopic remains a dependable high-floor rotation piece for an industry seeking to manage risk. Diagnosing the genre as “past the peak” is meant less as a condemnation and more as a recontextualization. Somewhere between The Doors (1991), Ray (2004) and the present day, the musician biopic changed from a prestige vehicle, meant to grant a platform to the the actor or actress in the starring role from which they can exhibit their talent for imitation of an iconic figure, to a multiplex seat-filler and nostalgic crowd-pleaser. True, there are still films in the genre which aspire towards the awards hopeful mode of years past. The Bob Dylan biopic; A Complete Unknown (2024), scooped a respectable eight Oscar Nominations but went home empty handed. Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody battled through mixed critical reception to claim four Oscars in 20191. But macro signals suggest that the awards spigot is running dry for this sort of thing. The Academy, HFPA, and other elite circles which control the awards circuit have grown sensitive to allegations of stodgy Baby Boomer-ness and smart audiences have caught onto the paint-by-numbers quality of these films writ large. Consider last year’s Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Released in the ideal awards season window, well-reviewed, projected as an Oscars also-ran, and struck out, comprehensively. I liked Deliver Me From Nowhere well enough, but then, I am a Bruce Springsteen fan and isn’t that just the typical line for these things anymore? These musician biopics are light work for the average movie critic, if you like the artist you’ll like the move, polite middle of the road rating, send that bad boy in well ahead of deadline, clock out early, maybe play golf or something. This is what drew me to Michael. What could this movie possibly have done to warrant the comprehensive and merciless critical asskicking it’s been receiving for the better part of a week now?

Michael is a turd. It’s incompetently constructed from the foundations up and plasters over its total lack of narrative or artistic ambition with a passable directing job from the ever-dependable Antoine Fuqua. Having said all of that, I’m still not entirely sure why this, of all movies, is seemingly the breaking point for our nation’s working movie critics.

Let’s begin with the salvageable. While I’m issuing stays of execution, I may as well hand one out to Jaafar Jackson (Jermaine’s son). He’s not good if we’re scoring him against the leading man performances which define this genre, but he’s also a complete rookie, cast for his pretty-good facial resemblance to Uncle Michael. Getting The Michael Jackson Voice right can’t have been an easy first assignment and the guy can sing/dance. That’s essential for the movie Fuqua is trying to make here. Enlisting the aid of Bohemian Rhapsody editor John Ottman, Fuqua seeks to capture some of that movie’s concert scene mojo. This has the usual effect of making me want to seek out the archival footage from whatever is being re-staged for the film, but as a big screen spectacle to justify the film’s existence, it’s a worthwhile strategy.

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The film certainly doesn’t exist because it has some novel angle to approaching and understanding Michael Jackson, either as a man or an icon. Michael is the worst kind of celebrity biopic: The Narrativized Wikipedia Page, or in this case half a Wikipedia page. Michael jets through notable events in the life of Michael Jackson like it’s got a plane to catch, opting for rote re-staging devoid of friction or emotionality. Here’s dreary little Gary, Indiana. Here’s the Jackson 5 as you remember them, bell-bottoms, afros and all. Here’s Michael’s brothers, each one an interchangeable cipher with maybe one or two lines. Here’s Joe Jackson (Colman Domingo, giving us nothing) getting his belt off to whup little Michael’s ass for talking back. Here’s Bubbles the chimpanzee (in CGI, bleh). Here’s the Thriller video. Here’s the Pepsi Commercial incident. You get the idea. The result is a biopic with almost zero interest in the inner life of its subject. This would inevitably complicate things and Michael treats any possible complication as antimatter. There are practical reasons for this, but you get nothing but scorn from me for juking around a narrative challenge rather than confronting it. Storytelling is problem solving. Filmmaking is problem solving in the hard and fast realm of the real world, rather than merely on the page. Effective life stories find ways to show the human failings of immortal figures, to give the audience some sense of their struggles. Michael is content to ignore all that nastiness in favor of another needledrop or Moment You Might Remember. Like an ignored leak in a water main, the insistence on an uncomplicated, pollyanna King of Pop rots the film’s foundations from within.

The elephant in the room has gone ignored long enough: this movie’s narrative does in fact end in 1988 with the release of Bad, therefore omitting the notorious allegations of child molestation which followed Michael Jackson up until his death. This, presumably, is what ginned up such venom among the commentariat. It is galling, and shameless, and disrespectful to the victims, sure. All of that is true. But I’ll be honest, I get it. As I said, this is meant as a crowd-pleaser first and foremost, a celebration of the good times. We can discuss whether that’s appropriate in this case but it’s undoubtedly the correct strategic move. However, the film’s insistence on framing Michael as a gentle soul, oppressed by his abusive father, while omitting his own alleged predatory behavior drenches the production in the rank stench of cynicism. The selective amnesia protects the still-living beneficiaries of Michael Jackson’s largesse and the audience’s good time at the expense of any sort of realism It’s impossible to ignore once you detect it. The veteran character actors brought in to prop up Jaafar seem to be aware of this. Miles Teller2 may as well be wearing a sign around his neck that reads “The Check Cleared.” It’s genuinely shocking how little Fuqua was able to get from the usually-rock-solid Colman Domingo. Moreover, if this is simply going to be a re-staging of Moments, I detect some notable absences. No Paul McCartney? Like at all? Couldn’t throw a wig on some white boy and pretend he’s Eddie Van Halen, here to supply the riff for “Beat It?” Couldn’t get a real chimp to play Bubbles? Like not even once? Fuqua and company were likely correct to devote the lion’s share of their efforts to the performance sequences but the laziness outside of them is so obvious.

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Cynicism suffuses the film’s central conflict and renders it totally inert. In as much as we actually have a conflict here, it can basically be summarized as Michael wanting self expression and freedom to pursue his solo career, while his father views him solely as an extension of the family brand, and therefore himself. What is this film if not an extension of the Jackson Family brand? When a film becomes a mere branding exercise, we really do see the collapse of any conceptual wall between “art” and “content.” If these are no longer about telling stories or providing opportunities to actors, then they’re simply adult sing-along hours trading on cheap nostalgia. The optimal play, then, becomes puppeteering the biggest possible (usually dead) star for about two hours so their fans can all have a nice reminiscence, devoid of any difficult feelings, or even the vaguest allusion to a “complicated legacy.” Cynical? You bet. But it’s a workable theory, and who better, who bigger, to stress test it than Michael Jackson himself?

Given this film’s box office receipts, it may also be a valid theory. Lord help us.

I rate this movie one and a half CGI chimpanzees out of five.