‘Michael’ Film Review: Phantom of the Pop Opera

The Contending’s Clarence Moye reviews the Michael film musical biopic starring Jaafar Jackson as the King of Pop.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story kind of ruined musical biopics for me. Particularly those that offer an overly ambitious and improbably broad vantage point on the subject’s life. While the film wasn’t particularly good, the recent Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere at least tried to take the smartest path through the life of its subject. It focused on a single period in Springsteen’s life: the creation of his acclaimed album Nebraska. If only Antoine Fuqua’s Michael film followed the same trajectory.

Instead, it spends the first two hours of a reported 4-hour story giving us highlights of Michael Jackson’s (Jaafar Jackson) already luridly over-publicized early career.

I knew I was in for trouble in the first five minutes. See, Walk Hard brilliantly begins with Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) pausing before walking onstage to an adoring audience. His drummer / drug dealer Sam (Tim Meadows) proclaims, “You’re gonna have to give him a moment, son. Dewey Cox has to think about his entire life before he plays.”

Michael begins the exact same way. Not an original or even very good start.

I sympathize with the challenge director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) and screenwriter John Logan (The Aviator) faced in making this film. Not only did they have to find the appropriate narrative thread to capture Jackson’s impossible life, but they also had to navigate a wildly thin legal tightrope. While their original vision for the film was tossed out by the Jackson estate, I’m reacting to what I saw onscreen, not what could have been.

And what’s on screen is mostly not good.

There are a handful of compelling sequences. Glimpses of Jackson’s creative process always land well, particularly the gestation of the Thriller album. And I remain dazzled and impressed by Jaafar Jackson’s, Michael’s nephew, ability to capture his dancer physicality and concert stage presence. Even if Jaafar gives a great impersonation of his famous uncle rather than a fully fleshed out performance, he’s still always captivating.

But by taking a “greatest hits” stance on his life, Michael suffers greatly. We’re thrown from era to era, beat to beat, with erratic momentum. There’s no real story here, no compelling them. Instead, here’s Off the Wall. Studio 54. Bubbles. Thriller. The Thriller music video. The infamous Pepsi commercial. Moments we already knew so much about but completely devoid of any new perspective or revisiting.

Yes, the film wants us to understand Jackson’s greatest challenge: overcoming his overbearing father, Joseph (a nightmarish Colman Domingo, saddled with hilariously demonic contacts). But there’s so much more to the King of Pop, I suspect. Michael, filtered through the Jackson family, doesn’t really seem to understand the man himself. There are scenes that pose hypotheses as to his biggest eccentricities — a Peter Pan book becomes the model for his many nose surgeries — but it feels as if no one involved in the project, the family included, has a compelling take on the man in the mirror. His legacy hangs uncomfortably over the film — a phantom of this pop opera.

Ultimately, Michael features some great stage sequences strung together with incredibly flat family drama. I’m not mad that it didn’t cover the allegations. That’s another story for another film. Yet, leaving the theater, I couldn’t help but imagine a more compelling film that focused solely on the Thriller era. Clearly, the tricky legality of the abuse allegations prevents a compelling exploration of his engagement with young boys. Maybe the way through it would have been viewing Jackson through the eyes of Bill, his near-lifetime bodyguard played here by KeiLyn Durrel Jones. Their relationship feels to be the most authentic in the film. It would have been far more interesting to see the Jacksons from an outsider’s perspective looking in.

What we’re left with is a film desperate to recast Michael Jackson as a misunderstood saint, touched by God with unending talent and rising above the oppression of his father.

If Michael Jackson has to think about his life before he plays, then what would he really have seen?

Guess we’ll never really know.

The Michael film opens Friday in theaters nationwide.