by Tom Farrelly
Worth: $4.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jaafar Jackson, Nia Long, Colman Domingo
Intro:
… like skimming the Michael Jackson wikipedia page at a Michael Jackson karaoke night.
2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody has a lot to answer for. Ever since the squeaky-clean Freddie Mercury puff piece made a large fortune, the Michael Jackson version was inevitable.
Post 2018, we have seen every iteration of the musical biopic, the concept has become a genre of its own. And Michael makes no effort to distance itself from the crowd. In fact, it does the opposite, seemingly intent on being as formulaic and risk averse as possible.
Antoine Fuqua is at the helm, but Michael feels less like it was directed by an artist than engineered by a focus-group-pleasing machine. The film goes all-in on the MJ music and image, hoping it will be enough to carry a 2-hour film on its own. The result is a shiny, emotionally shallow Michael Jackson sing-along.
The script is paper-thin, servicing as a vehicle to get us from career milestone to milestone. We get a couple of relationship building scenes, then a musical montage that sums up some significant years, then we rinse and repeat. It’s tough to get a read on Michael Jackson as a human, his personal hardships and flaws are well-documented, but don’t expect any deeper explorations here. His relationship with his father/manager Joe Jackson is the core conflict, but it’s pretty toothless.
Finding someone to play Michael Jackson is a fool’s errand. A man that can sing and dance like Michael and is a good actor, he’s probably not out there. Jafaar Jackson, Michael’s real-life nephew, is given the impossible task. There’s no denying his effort and commitment. He can certainly sing and dance like his uncle, but so can thousands of Michael Jackson impersonators. What’s missing is his emotional range. In fairness, he’s never exposed as a lacking performer, but the script simply doesn’t ask much of him. The film feels hamstrung by Jafaar’s range. Colman Domingo picks up the slack, carrying the emotional weight of the film as Joe Jackson. While it’s a serviceable portrayal, Domingo is a veteran and his character is written so flat that he could tackle this material with his eyes closed.
The film’s biggest crime is it just has nothing new to say about Michael Jackson. None of his music is given a deeper meaning. We whisk through his life from poor young boy to his career zenith, the journey complete with onscreen dates and locations in case we ever get lost or confused along the way. The final concert set piece follows no emotional journey and signifies nothing of personal weight or catharsis. It’s simply where we end up because that’s what these films do, they end in a big concert! The overall experience is like skimming the Michael Jackson wikipedia page at a Michael Jackson karaoke night.
