Plot Summary: The story of the famous musician Michael Jackson, known as the King of Pop.

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Writer: John Logan

Runtime: 2 hours 7 mins

Main Cast:

• Jaafar Jackson as Michael
• Colman Domingo as Joseph Jackson
• Nia Long as Katherine Jackson
• Larenz Tate as Berry Gordy
• Kendrick Sampson as Quincy Jones

Review by: Samuel

What I Liked:

This is both easy and complicated all at once. Because the easy answer is I liked and LOVED listening to the music of the greatest musical artist ever…but that’s enough. I also don’t want to get into each and every thing about the film and the performances because that would keep you reading for an hour.  So, I will say the thing that stuck out most was the performances of the two Michaels. Both are new to acting, which just blows my mind because Juliano Valdi as young Michael and Jaafar Jackson as adult Michael were both lightning strikes. There is a moment in the first act when Valdi covers a Smokey Robinson song that had my jaw LITERALLY drop. He hit notes I haven’t heard people three times his age hit. The movie mentions that the character has perfect pitch, and I might wager the actor did as well. 

That leads us to Jaafar, the nephew of Michael, who got a lot of hate for his casting. Let me say this- whether or not nepotism got him in the door, he EARNED this role. When he first appears onscreen in the late 70s, I thought “okay, he kind of looks the part, and I like the voice he’s using”….around the time the movie gets to Thriller in the early 80s, I thought THAT IS MICHAEL JACKSON. It is the best portrayal I’ve seen since the real thing (including the fabulous Broadway Show starring Myles Frost). The voice and dance choreography are one thing, but the way he encapsulates Michael’s soul is something entirely different. When he’s not performing and just hanging with his family watching movies, signing autographs for random people in a toy store, or talking about his love of Charlie Chaplin, I just felt like I’m watching documentary footage of Michael himself.  I cannot give enough praise to this performance; I think he may have surpassed Chalamet on my list of most impressive portrayals of famous musicians. And, credit to Jaafar, he had mentioned he studied actors like Daniel Day-Lewis and Christian Bale to understand how they fully embrace the role they take. It is clear he took his studies seriously. 

Obviously, I can’t leave out the musical performances. There were full renditions of music videos, commercial shoots, and concerts. When he was creating Beat It and Thriller it almost felt like we got an actual behind-the-scenes look at the creative process for the videos. When he performed Human Nature on stage, it felt like I imagined my parents told me it was when they saw him. When he performed the FULL song of Bad (complete with the moon walk) and you saw people in the crowd faint, it reminded you of the archive footage we’ve all seen. This is all to say that as someone who was not fortunate enough to see Michael Jackson live, this is as close as you can get.

What I Didn’t Like:

I’m not sure any of the following are dislikes; they are more like observations. First, I hated Miles Teller’s (who played MJ’s manager)  hair- it was really bad in this film. Next, Joe Jackson- the abusive patriarch of the family- was portrayed differently in this film than I remember in the 1992 TV Movie. He is still VERY unlikeable, but rather than being an evil man, he seems only driven by greed. They showed him reaching for his belt a couple of times, and they showed the clear disdain his family had for him, but I felt they portrayed him as less terrible than he actually was. Not at all a dealbreaker, just something I noticed.

And finally, the pacing. This movie doesn’t feel like a traditional film following a straight-line narrative of beginning, rise, fall, and redemption. You kind of just pop in to different points in Michael’s life. Giant title cards act as transitions to different years/decades. We start in 1966 to see what he’s up to, then jump to 1968 when he’s first performing on stage, then to 1970 when he’s recording I Want You Back for Motown, then to 1982 when he’s making the album and music videos for Thiller and Beat It. It just didn’t feel cohesive, and in the beginning, especially, the time jumps came quickly. However, once we got into whatever he was doing at that time, I enjoyed watching it. I could watch the making of Beat It 10 times over.

Images Courtesy of IMDB