Amidst a non-stop soundtrack of classic ’70s and ’80s music, one of Michael’s few quiet scenes resonates the loudest. The young Michael Jackson comes under the tutelage of Motown founder Berry Gordy. Prepping for a press conference, Gordy offers Jackson a tip.
“In this business,” he says, “you lie about everything.”
Ten-year-old Michael Jackson, a musical prodigy without equal, takes Gordy’s advice. He swiftly announces to a room full of journalists that he’s only eight years old.
What’s up onscreen in Michael may be accurate, but it sure omits a lot of stuff. Proceeding from the King of Pop’s early years in Gary, Indiana, the biopic ends abruptly in 1988 during Jackson’s Bad tour, perhaps because that may be the very last moment any movie about Jackson can plausibly end without at least addressing the myriad controversies and scandals that engulfed his later years.
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Michael doesn’t absolve Jackson of any of the allegations leveled against him in the 1990s and 2000s. Instead, it ignores them entirely. The only victim in this film is Michael Jackson himself, who’s portrayed as an infallible genius who suffered for decades at the hands of a tyrannical father who exploited his God-given talents, controlled his decisions, and abused him relentlessly.
As played by Colman Domingo, Michael’s Joe — “Joseph” to his children, who never call him “Dad” — is as cartoonishly cruel as the movie’s version of Michael is utterly angelic. The closest the film gets to painting Michael (played by the real Jackson’s nephew, Jaafar) in an unflattering light is when it suggests that by the early 1980s he began to experiment with plastic surgery, especially on his nose. But even that, Michael suggests, was ultimately Joe’s (and perhaps the audience’s) fault. Everyone demanded perfection from Michael Jackson, and he went under the knife multiple times to try to achieve it.
Otherwise, Michael’s Michael is just about flawless. He happily stops whatever he’s doing to sign autographs for fans. He watches classic movies and eats late-night ice cream with his Mom (Nia Long). He donates millions to charity. He rescues lab animals. He doesn’t quite heal the sick, but he sure visits them in the hospital a lot. (Michael may contain more scenes of Jackson comforting ill children than talking with his own brothers in the Jackson 5.)
But it’s not just that Michael’s portrait of its title character is incomplete. He’s depicted as so pure that he becomes uninteresting; a moonwalking and talking human jukebox with little in the way of a compelling story. The only thing this basic rags-to-riches narrative has going for it is its non-stop parade of Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 hits, music so good it will surely turn Michael into a major box-office hit.
Granted, the presence of all those songs should satisfy audiences showing up to relive an undeniably brilliant artist’s glory days. Just don’t expect Michael to give you much more than that beyond some repetitive scenes of Domingo’s Joe Jackson beating his son, berating the rest of his family, and manipulating everyone around him to ensure his own financial well-being. He’s the only antagonist or conflict Michael’s got.
Otherwise, the film grooves through Jackson’s biography in straightforward fashion. Its primary events take place between 1978 and 1984, when Michael finally grew weary of Joe’s bullying and began to embark on a solo career. The music he created in those years speaks for itself. And it’s tough to find fault in anything Jaafar Jackson does in Michael. He gives an extremely credible performance as his uncle, capturing his vocal inflections and dance moves, and suffusing his dialogue scenes with a likably cheerful energy. He does precisely what the film asks of him.
What the film asks of him, though, amounts to little more than recreating some of Jackson’s most famous performances, like his Motown 25 moonwalk or the big zombie dance number from the video for “Thriller.” Other than Michael’s parents, Michael contains no major supporting characters. The closest it comes might be a few scenes featuring John Branca (Miles Teller), the suave lawyer Jackson hires to help him break free of Joe’s influence. But Branca, a co-executor of Jackson’s estate to this day and also a co-producer of Michael, contributes almost nothing to the story. His appearances mostly consist of him nodding along as Jackson monologues about his vision for his career, followed by Branca’s reassurances that he will help his client become the biggest pop star in the world. (Spoiler alert: He did.)
Yes, Michael looks and sounds superb. It boasts flashy costumes by Marci Rodgers, handsome production design by Barbara Ling, and crisp sound that makes Michael’s numerous concert scenes feel like live performances in front of massive audiences rather than lip-synched green-screen footage. It absolutely delivers toe-tapping confections that Jackson fans expect.
According to a profile of Fuqua in The New Yorker, Michael originally delivered more than that. Its initial cut apparently opened with a “reenactment of the 1993 police raid” on Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, where police “examined and photographed Jackson’s body, to compare it with descriptions from Jordan Chandler,” a boy who had accused Jackson of sexual abuse. It wasn’t until after Fuqua had shot this sequence that he learned that “Jackson’s settlement with the Chandler family turned out to include an agreement that forbade the estate to participate in depictions of the events around Chandler’s allegation.”
By necessity, then, Michael couldn’t engage with those accusations. But even without dealing with that specific incident, a Michael Jackson biopic could have been an opportunity to make a genuinely thoughtful film about the toll child stardom takes on a person. Instead, Michael ends too early in Jackson’s life to allow itself room to consider the ramifications of Joe’s actions — or, for that matter, Michael’s.
In recent years, the term “sportswashing” has been used to describe the way governments or companies sponsor high-profile sporting events to deflect criticism after scandals. Michael suggests it may be time to coin the term “biopicwashing” for the creation of biographical movies that exclusively focus on only the positive actions of complicated public figures. Deliberately omitting the more troubling aspects of someone’s history to sell tickets (and albums) not only echoes Berry Gordy’s advice to young Michael Jackson in this film, it also calls to mind a lyric from one of the greatest pop songs ever written:
“Be careful what you do / ’Cause the lie becomes the truth.”
RATING: 4/10
