Discover the story of Michael Jackson, one of the most influential artists the world has ever known, and his life beyond the music, tracing his journey from the discovery of his extraordinary talen...
I knew I was going to fight against my biases every step of the way when the Michael Jackson biopic came out; my favorite musical artist of all time finally getting a biographical feature film about his life after a litany of ups and downs, delays, discourse and (alleged) behind-the-scenes melodrama that pushed this movie back? Nine-year-old me would’ve screamed in joy and HEE-HEE’D all the way to the bank. Alas, I must review this as both a fan and a lover of cinema….
….which is why it pains me to write that “Michael” is one of the most disappointing movies not just of this year, but perhaps my entire life.
Antoine Fuqua was a weird ass choice to direct this. Don’t get me wrong, I like his work on Training Day and the Equalizer films but none of the grit, spectacle and morbid sense of mythology that defines his work follows him here, let alone enough of it to give Michael Jackson’s life the type of operatic maximalism or emotional recklessness it truly deserves; someone who could also hold light and darkness in the same hand. His direction isn’t hesitant exactly, but there’s a persistent tentativeness to the whole thing—like the legs were cut out from underneath him or he just didn’t know how to approach the structure, writing, atmosphere, anything.
When it comes to these biopics, the iconographies behind the production design plays a much bigger role in the legitimacy of our subject’s journey than we might assume; it has to do the heavy lifting of transporting us not just to a time and place but into the very marrow of a life. Barbara Ling, the same Barbara Ling who conjured that immaculate, period-specific, sun-drenched reverie in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood should have been the perfect person for this….so why is her production design so basic and confined that it practically apologizes for existing? Ok, yeah, we do get a few genuine sparks here and there; the meticulous recreations of the occasional 1980s music video sets and more opulent environments are genuinely impressive, and you can feel the care and research that went into them. But those moments only make the surrounding emptiness more glaring. Everything outside of those pockets is more superficial than humanizing — the atmosphere is thin, the sense of scope and scale is almost nonexistent, and the world never quite stretches far enough in any direction to feel like it actually belongs to Michael Jackson.
The entire presentation is like a swimmer perpetually one bad stroke from going under—something shiny bobs up just in time to keep your head above water, but the waterline doesn’t really drop and undertow never fully lets go as a result. And maybe this is just my brain compartmentalizing everything but the technical elements are a refined example of that mixed bag. I always seem to stumble across Dion Beebe during the most sporadic of times, but even I know this is not his best work; most of his cinematography is technically proficient in the way that a hotel lobby is technically furnished—everything is where it’s supposed to be, not where it needs to be. Yes, the 1980s-inspired lighting and 16mm/35mm film emulation do give the film a somewhat retro feel, but unlike his work on Chicago, where the visual language and the film’s soul were in constant conversation with each other, the look here never fully commits to an identity—it just kind of hovers, decorative and detached, like a mood board that never became a movie.
Also, FOUR people edited this film; that right there is enough to let you know the editing isn’t up to par. When focusing squarely on the music recreations, the cuts are choppy and rushed, occasionally landing off-beat to where the editing actively fights the music it’s supposed to be serving. And when it isn’t doing that, it’s just coasting — routine, forgettable, workmanlike — which somehow makes the rare moment of genuine fluidity feel almost accidental.
Let’s not kid ourselves about the pacing, ok? For a two-hour runtime, it is somehow both anemic and bloated at the same time—sprinting past entire chapters worth lingering in while simultaneously taking its sweet time to pretty much say very little of consequence and while it’s not maddening, the very inability to sit and marinate in any one particular moment is just confusing. While it's unclear how much VFX was used, what we do see isn’t half-bad, there is a very faint level of tension running underneath only to dissolve before much can come of it and the tone is about what I expected from a biopic: celebratory at its core, with drama, euphoria, sadness and the occasional laugh threaded through—arguably the most consistent thing about it.
Yes, I know, the music is legitimately wonderful; that comes with the territory, and I’ll be the first to admit I was jamming out every time a classic came around. But as a jukebox soundtrack, the songs feel thematically arbitrary—dropped in more as crowd-pleasing punctuation than as any meaningful extension of the story being told. And more often than not, that gravitational pull ends up swallowing Lior Rosner’s original score whole—a score I am still genuinely, embarrassingly struggling to recall a single bar of. Thankfully, the sound design is much impressive and has more to offer, I appreciate Marci Rodgers dedication to the costume design ensuring to hyper fixate on every nook and cranny not just from Michael’s wardrobe but also the time periods we transition to and from, and the MPAA rating is accurate for the most part: just the right amount of PG-13 that doesn’t play it too safe nor pushes it past that threshold.
No surprises here, and I mean this in the most bittersweet way possible: the acting is pretty solid all around. Everyone knows their role, shows up, bring something to the table regardless of how much or little screen presence they’re afforded—and in a film this structurally compromised, that kind of collective commitment is not nothing. It’s just a shame they can’t salvage what they’ve been given. Dialogue isn’t dated per se but it is incredible basic and very ham-fisted and I guess I can say the same when it comes to the characters. Literally, every character we get here is either one-note or reduced to a background character. There hardly feels like there are any meaningful relationships or bonding moments here, including with his siblings, reducing complex lives to motivational montages. Hell, not even Michael himself is safe.
Colman Domingo commands attention, Nia Long and Miles Teller do the best they can in thankless roles….and look, call it nepotism if you want, but Jaafar Jackson genuinely earns his place here. Capturing his late uncle’s physicality, presence, and charisma with striking accuracy, there are moments where the impersonator accusation genuinely starts to feel unfair—because what Jaafar is doing goes beyond mimicry. That level of commitment he makes into fully transforming into Michael Jackson is a big reason why the film holds your attention for as long as it does and for a few precious moments, he nearly had me convinced Michael’s soul had infected his body.
Revisiting the King of Pop’s younger years all the way up to the BAD tour, what we get as a narrative is relatively simple but structurally repetitive and somewhat exhausting. It strictly follows the playbook for biopics: condensing a massive life into a few hours and relying on spectacle to hold it all together and on that front, it’s not too aggravating. Begrudgingly, I came to expect that, it playing less like a story and more like a curated playlist, stitching together iconic moments with a recurrent "year > event > song" bullet point format……and yet, I was still massively disappointed in how generic this entire narrative was played out. This is giving me straight ‘All Eyez on Me’ flashbacks; just like that film, this one is basically a highlight reel. It’s very reminiscent of someone skimming Wikipedia for research, being very selective and stingy on what details to include and what to omit for the sake of lionizing its central figure. My issues aren’t aimed at the obvious elephants in the room here; it’s aimed at the sheer reality that this movie actually built itself up to be something more than a regular biopic and then actively takes all the teeth out of it, stripping away most of the supposed emotional weight that’s meant to be there. No real exploration of the family dynamics beyond surface-level abuse mentions, no real nuance on Michael’s personal struggles, interests or complicated mindset as an artist, no new insights, no creative ambition, nothing uncomfortable.
Everything that could have made this interesting has carefully been pushed aside so the movie could keep gliding on the safest possible trajectory, a moonwalk across eggshells. As much as I’ve come to understand and appreciate movies that are specifically about vibes, there’s a timidity about the whole package here that curdles into something numbing before the third act rolls around and I just couldn’t shake it.
Before you start pissing into my ears, yes, I know many celebrity biopic films lean more toward a celebratory fan experience but they make an effort to, at least, pick apart the central figure we’re following or see how the world around them shapes their actions and/or vice versa. This film doesn't even portray Michael negatively; it just….doesn't portray him at all, focusing on Michael more as a product than the man, which is a critical error. It’s a project specifically designed to pick as few battles as possible with this giant cumulonimbus cloud hanging over every scene due to this fear of confronting literally anything that isn’t about Michael’s asshole father so really, the film isn’t entirely about anything. So much material they could’ve picked out to tell and its like only they kept settling for only the bare minimum.
Even the few subjects that do get mentioned like his vitiligo causing his skin to lose pigment, the Pepsi incident that hospitalized him and cause him to lose a good chunk of his hair, his relationship with Bubbles, the surgeries he had and him eventually giving into painkillers (all of which were fascinating details that actually did pique my interest), they come so few and far in-between to how much they did cut out or simplify for the sake of getting from Point A to B faster.
Yet another overly sanitised and formulaic musical biopic that’s as surface level as surface level gets, this is a huge disservice to one of the most interesting, complicated, layered, and controversial artists in history. “Michael” barely scrapes by on its lead performance and name recognition alone, actively omitting most of its emotional depth and dampening the fun you might still have.
