Following the King of Pop throughout the 1960s all the way through to the 1980s, Michael is the most recent musical biopic to hit the big screen, but does it meet expectations?
Firstly, The musical sequences in this movie are nothing short of fantastic, and that’s down to Jafaar Jackson’s sublime performance, his voice, mannerisms and dance moves are spot on. The songs lend themselves perfectly to these scenes and if you ignore a few editing hiccups, they’re certified crowd pleasers.
Unfortunately that’s where most of the positives, for me, come to an end, the movie falls into many of the traps that music biopics before it also fall into. Colman Domingo’s performance is great but the characters relationship with Michael is lacking in depth, as are many of the characters in the film. The other Jackson siblings are barely developed and are pretty much reduced to backup singers, their relationship with Michael isn’t really explored. The writing isn’t really anything to scream and shout about. The movie very much tries to hammer it home how good Michael is with kids and how charitable he is, it’s easy to see why the allegations aren’t yet explored, but everything that they do explore isn’t nearly as developed as it could have been, being quite straightforward and safe. It doesn’t feel like there’s any interest in telling a more complex story about Michael, which is a shame.
Furthermore, with such a little amount of screen time, Juliano Valdi is amazing as a younger Michael Jackson and his singing scenes and dance moves are so accurate. The concert scenes are truly the best scenes the movie have to offer, they almost make up for the lacking story and depth but it also begs the question, why wouldn’t I just watch the actual concert scenes? With such great songs it would’ve been really hard to not do them justice, and they do, The Human Nature and Billy Jean sequences in particular are great. But that’s about it for this movie unfortunately.
When it comes to some of the technical elements, the cinematography is pretty good, nothing that really catches your eye but it’s not bad. The editing is pretty choppy, you can very much tell when different takes are being merged together and the camera work isn’t very interesting. Along with some questionable CGI in places, specifically his chimp, Bubbles.
Overall, the King of Pop’s songs are, naturally, enough to grab the audiences attention in the concert recreations. But the straightforward story and one-note writing of several characters brings this movie down. Fans of Michael Jackson are sure to love the crowd pleasing concert scenes and walk away satisfied, but as a whole movie, it’s not enough to stand out among other music biopics, ending up as more of a Bohemian Rhapsody as opposed to a Better Man.
