Movie Review: “Michael”

By Bob Garver

Poster Credit IMDB

            The big problem with “Michael,” the new Michael Jackson biopic, is that it has the approval of the Jackson family. As such, we are going to get a very flattering portrait of possibly the single most controversial personality in the history of the music industry. The scandals that plagued his later years are an unignorable part of his legacy, no matter how much this movie tries to ignore them. Simply put: a movie with this much love for Michael Jackson, made by people who unconditionally love and want to protect Michael Jackson, is not going to be an interesting portrait of Michael Jackson.

            The film follows Michael from his youth until 1988 – basically the first 30 years of his life. Growing up in Gary, Indiana, young Michael (Juliano Valdi) was essentially robbed of his childhood by his father Joe (Colman Domingo), who demanded that his musician children pursue fame at the expense of their happiness, and some would argue, sanity. The real Jackson family – so protective of Michael’s image - apparently has no problem with Joe being portrayed as a monster. Valdi does an excellent job singing, dancing, emoting, and overall playing a young Michael. Maybe if the whole movie was built around Michael when he was this young, it wouldn’t need to bother giving us a shortchanged version of his adult years.

            Of course, Michael does grow up to be played by Jaafar Jackson, son of Jermaine Jackson and Michael’s real-life nephew. Well, you can’t say the resemblance isn’t there, even if Michael stopped resembling himself after a certain point. Seriously though, Jaafar is fine. He’s obviously putting every effort into what he surely knows is the role of a lifetime. Is he as talented a musician as his uncle? No, but then Michael wouldn’t be the one-of-a-kind performer he was if he could be easily emulated – even by members of his own family.

            The movie knows it can’t get a musical performance to match Michael’s stage presence, so it keeps the musical sequences… not exactly “to a minimum,” but they’re never as thorough as fans probably want them to be. I’ll put it this way: I never thought that Michael could take the pop world by storm based on the songs and dances we get in this movie. Nor do I see audiences demanding “cult” screenings of this movie that emphasize the music in the years to come.

            Come to think of it, the dull musical sequences are as big a problem with “Michael” as the toothless storytelling. I’m just less mad about them because I can see that people – namely Jaafar – are really trying. They just fall short because of their choppiness. But the musical numbers are the selling point of this movie, since I think audiences know in advance that the biography stuff is hardly hard-hitting. Maybe this movie should have taken the “jukebox musical” route of just being a glorified concert of epic performances to celebrate Michael’s style. Jaafar probably couldn’t have carried the whole thing himself, but taking on a few numbers could have lent authenticity to compliment a necessary cast of career professionals.

            But no, “Michael” had to take the dialogue-heavy biopic route and it falls flat on its face. Not only does the movie cut out Michael’s crazy, scandalous later years, but it doesn’t handle the years we do see particularly well. Surely Michael had more going on than just being a man-child who liked toys and animals and whose worst deed was failing to stand up to his tyrannical father. I’d have a hard time believing that anybody is this wholesome, let alone the obviously-disturbed Michael Jackson. This movie would have you believe that Michael lived like an angel to match having the voice of one. It’s bad, but ironically not the cool Michael Jackson brand of “Bad.”

Grade: C-

“Michael” is rated PG-13 for some thematic material, language, and smoking. Its running time is 127 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.