Nate At The Movies

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Up until a few days ago, I thought I knew what to expect going into the Michael Jackson biopic. I was expecting, as Jonathan Fujii very eloquently put it, “the most generic music biopic formula that continues to plague the 21st century and the best songs you’ve ever heard in your life”, but then the embarrassingly low Rotten Tomatoes score came out, and I got nervous. Could they seriously have screwed up the Michael Jackson biopic? There’s no surer home run in the genre! When I left the theater and called Morgan, the first thing I told her was, “I don’t know what the critics were thinking—that rocked!”. And it did!

To get the most obvious thing out of the way first, Jaafar Jackson was sensational in the lead role, and absolutely disappeared—the sign of a truly great performance. Now, it probably helped that I’m not as inundated with Michael Jackson music and videos as his biggest fans are, but the aspects of Michael that I was familiar with shined through in Jaafar’s performance, from the speaking and singing voices to the mannerisms and the dang dance moves. I was flabbergasted as he moved just as smoothly as the King of Pop would’ve if he was still here. Because of my unfamiliarity with the finer details of Michael Jackson’s life, I really enjoyed seeing Jaafar bring an innocence and a humanity to Michael—not that that wasn’t there before, but to see him as more than his music was pretty cool.

I know a lot of people are going to take issue with this movie’s sanitized retelling of Michael Jackson’s rise, but I actually enjoyed seeing Michael become so deified. His unmatched music and cultural impact certainly beg for such treatment, but I also valued the focus on his softer, emotional, childlike side, highlighting the effects of the emotional abuse and manipulation that he endured from Joe. Most biopics’ honorific portrayals of their subjects stink of brown-nosing, but with so much of Michael’s life and death mired in controversy, this purer iteration of Michael felt more like reparations than selective memory, and it really worked for me. Also, unlike most people that I’ve seen criticizing this movie for excluding any of the allegations or scandals, I’ve smartly remembered this film is 100% getting a sequel. It pays to follow Hollywood.

The moviegoing public has been positively drowning in music biopics for the last 20 years (the last 10 especially), and very few try to abandon the tried-and-true formula (for good reason—there’s money to be made). I’ve loved the ones that did, like Better Man, and while Michael stuck pretty closely to the formula, it made that formula work as well as it possibly could. The performances were stellar and immersive (thanks to Jaafar Jackson and the catalog of all-timers he had to work with), and the family drama in between did just enough to tide one over until the next big musical sequence. Even lacking a deep knowledge of Michael Jackson’s career, I knew every song that played, and though it’s difficult to choose a favorite, the final 15 minutes brought the house down. Something about the stadium arrangements of popular songs always hits, and “Bad” in particular was great. I also loved the recreations of “Thriller” and “Beat It”—I wish I could dance like that!

The last few music biopics I’ve seen have made me grow tired of the genre, but Michael brought me back to life. I still think that there are too many of them out there, and many of them aren’t worth the time and effort and ticket price, but when the subject is as monumental as Michael Jackson, of course it’s going to work. Maybe we should stick to just the most colossal musicians when making biopics—which is why I’m fully behind the Frank Sinatra biopic that’s been in swimming in Hollywood circles for a while. The music is good enough to carry the movie, and when you add in an excellent central performance and visuals that don’t drain all the life out of the most colorful figures in history, they even make you want to come back for more. I already told Morgan I’d go see Michael again with her next weekend—the spectacle alone is worth the price of admission a second time.