Michael Jackson is a complicated subject for me. Not because of why you might expect, though. Like most who have consumed any (pop) culture over the past fifty years, The Jackson 5, The Jacksons, and Michael Jackson especially have been not just a part of my life, but a large, even life-altering part. I am the oldest of five children, ten years between my youngest brother and myself with only one sister separating two sets of boys. From the time the youngest was in diapers my three brothers and I performed together. Because we were a group of singing and dancing brothers, we inevitably incorporated those record-setting first four singles from The Jackson 5 into our act. In fact, through to our final performance together in 2014, we would often end our sets with the "I Want You Back/ABC/The Love You Save" medley from the "Triumph" tour recording. This naturally branched into learning/incorporating post-Motown Jacksons records into our shows and, of course, countless solo offerings from Michael. Whether it was our "Michael" doing the whole of the "Billie Jean" routine, performing "Thriller" at every show in October, or perfecting the "Dangerous" routine from the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards for my senior year talent show, the amount of artistry this single human being encompassed was not lost on me. As I matured, I was confronted with the allegations leveled against Jackson and though I don't overlook or discount this aspect of the individual Michael Jackson was they are very much not a part of the story this film is telling. That said, the point of any music biopic is to investigate the artist further, attempting to make sense of the why and how they produced the art they did, but maybe this is precisely why Antoine Fuqua's
Michael is more a concert than it is a contemplative or thoughtful piece of introspection.
Michael Jackson was an enigma by intention (“I wanna be mysterious.”) yet this film does nothing (new) to uncover either what made him the way he was or why he chose to be that way. The movie is most brave when it dares to confront fans with the obvious that was never spoken of (the nose jobs, the physical fallout from the Pepsi commercial) and is at its best when Jaafar Jackson and Juliano Krue Valdi are performing from what is irrefutably one of the best catalogues in all of music, but even if the film only zeroed in on the how/why such a meek man like Michael made such aggressive and often times angry music, why his social to stage persona shifted so drastically, the result would be ten times more enlightening than the carousel of greatest hits we've both heard (re: his discography) or seen (re: The Jacksons: An American Dream) before. What makes Michael worth the time and effort though is that Michael Jackson is the template for how to perfectly balance quality and commerciality to the point even in its most shallow of re-creations the music and visuals never ring hollow.
