After Michael Jackson’s death, a lot of people immortalized him as the King of Pop, one of the greatest artists of all time. This is definitely true in a lot of cases. He has the highest-grossing album of all time, “Thriller,” and was super influential in pop music as a whole as one of the early pioneers of using music videos as an art form. His influence is undeniable. And yet, his legacy remains controversial due to having kids over at his Neverland estate, with accusations of child abuse. In addition, his name has been found multiple times in the Epstein files, along with photos of him and Epstein together. Nonetheless, the movie came out in theaters and was met with acclaim from fans and mixed reviews from critics. I found this movie to be so shameless in both its pandering by the director, Antoine Fuqua, and the Jackson Estate for monetary benefit and its blatant distortion of the narrative to show Michael as a hero.
The first thing this movie gets wrong is with the main theme of family. Sure, this is a biopic about Michael, but it’s also about Michael trying to find his family. This includes his family in the movie, which includes his mom, five brothers, and sister and exclude his Dad. But they don’t even get that right! For the entire movie, there was only the Jackson Five and one of his sisters, Rebbie. The problem with the movie is the absence of his brother, Randy, who would later on join the Jackson Five, and his sister Janet, who became as successful as Michael at one point. (Thanks, Justin Timberlake.) I think this just shows that it doesn’t care about that idea of what family is or what makes it; it cares about making a movie where they throw out ideas that they later on never address fully.
The main aspect they focused on with this theme is Michael’s life with his dad, Joseph. He trained all of his sons since they were young on how to be musicians, seeing them as the family’s ticket out of their poor lives in Gary, Indiana. He would make them work hard and would beat them if they didn’t do what he wanted. On its own, this would be a good idea for a film, trying to talk about the abuse Michael went through in his life. But, at some points, Joseph seems less like he’s an antagonist and more like a person who is also in this movie. Sure, there are points where he is shown to be doing bad stuff and is very controlling of Michael, but if you take him out of the story entirely, I think there won’t be much change in the plot. It would just be Michael making music, which that’s what the movie is already about. Along with that, there are many points where it seems like the writers are starting to wrap up Joseph’s character in the movie and focus only on Michael. If they had, then it would probably be better, but they can’t get that right because he is the main point, the main example of what Michael is trying to escape.
In a much better biopic, Rocketman, the director, Dexter Fletcher, shows Elton John trying to move away from something they’re not and do a much better job at doing so by making much better writing. For example, in that movie, Elton is stuck with an abusive manager that he has sexual relations with. After he realizes how bad his life had gotten up to that point from his many addictions that had taken over his life, he leaves his life behind in search of recovery in one of the largest emotional climaxes of the movie. Elton’s relationships and dynamics in that movie are done way better than Michael and Joseph were, especially in that it was built up and actually felt rewarding. In this movie, it felt more like it happened because the movie was almost over, and they needed to move along for the final music number.
As for the actual parts of the movie, it’s just fine. Nothing about the visuals or music is interesting. Each song that was covered by Jaafer Jackson was done well, but I think they didn’t need to play the full song and pad out the time like that, and the acting can range from being really flat to better than a soap opera. It’s just a nothing burger with a side of bland fries. The movie quality is nothing but the bare minimum, something that can get popular and well-received by the public.
If you read between the lines in the movie, you can really find the message. For example, much of the movie focuses on the fact that Michael cares deeply about kids. In many scenes in the movie, he was shown to visit kids in the hospital and give them toys. While this is a nice thing for sure, there’s one thing about it, that there’s really no reason for Michael to do these actions in the movie. It doesn’t really do anything for his character and also doesn’t mean anything for the plot. The kids never really move in the plot and mainly survive as a backdrop for the actual events of the movie. Not only that, but this movie also stopped right before the allegations about Michael’s behavior were made public, something that many other critics had pointed out before the movie was released.
This movie just feels like a full-on whitewash of Michael Jackson as some kind of creative genius who was too innocent to do anything wrong, trying to divert attention from anything bad he has ever done in his life. This movie serves to do two things and only these two things: make quick and easy money for the Jackson Estate, and reshape Michael into something he’s not, a child. I’m giving this movie a 4.5 out of 10.
