I didn’t originally plan on writing anything about Michael. For one thing, I just watched it this past weekend, weeks after its initial release. Secondly, I’m not that into posthumously repairing Jackson’s legacy by focusing on the music and ignoring the allegations and trials and everything. Finally, I’m just not that big of a fan. Yeah, the music is undeniable, but for the majority of my life Jackson has been a punchline more than an icon. After watching the film, I felt the need to point out a few things I liked or found interesting. But I mainly wanted to compare it to The Mandalorian and Grogu. Hear me out.
I liked The Mandalorian and Grogu more than most largely because I altered my expectations for the franchise. I simply didn’t hold that film up to the standards I would for any other movie. I didn’t care that it didn’t really add anything to the mythology or develop the characters or their relationships. None of it mattered. But I still had a good time because I prepared myself beforehand. I was okay with spending more time with these characters along with some serviceable action and recognizable Star Wars shit peppered in. That’s not how movies are supposed to work, but I wanted to like it because it was Star Wars.
The same is true of Michael. Its insane success can only be chalked up to an existing fanbase that simply wanted to relive his most iconic moments…up to a certain point. This movie consists primarily of musical performances and Michael’s process of writing songs. There’s a healthy dose of Colman Dominigo’s Joe Jackson looking like a goblin showing his open mouthed look of angry befuddlement every fifteen minutes or so. And there are a few key moments that get special attention like the introduction of Bubbles, the filming of Thriller, and the burning accident during the Pepsi commercial.
But beyond Joe being a domineering and abusive father, we get no insight into Michael as a character. This is a film in which the biggest pop star in the country still lives with his parents (watching movies and eating popcorn with his mother most nights), has a pet chimp and giraffe, has a bedroom that a typical nine-year-old would love, and no one ever says anything about it. Sure, the film makes it very clear that fame kept Michael from having a normal childhood. I’m all for making up for lost time, but the fact that this movie presents his life as even remotely normal is insane to me.
Beyond that, Michael doesn’t feel like a person at any point in the film. Perhaps this is by design, meant to show what fame did to Michael. But I didn’t get much of a sense of that, either. It felt more like they just wanted to play the hits with as little complications as possible. This may not have been the original intent of the film, since the ending had to be changed late in the process. The film was supposed to end in the early '90s when the first child abuse allegations were made and the police raided his Neverland Ranch. (According to some slight Googling, this had to be scrapped because of the settlement made from those allegations forbidding any movie or show dramatizing the events.)
Had they gone that route, I don’t think the film would have been nearly as successful, though I would have found it a bit more interesting. Not many fans would have wanted that. First off, a lot of them don’t believe ANY of the allegations (this is anecdotal, but any post I’ve looked into online about this always has plenty of commenters making the case that literally every bad thing ever said about Jackson is a lie), so if you’re making a movie about him, you’ll probably need to keep those fans happy. With that in mind, we ended up with this fan film, meant to remind us of the great moments, and we can fill in the blanks ourselves with questions about his lifestyle.
Once again, that’s not how movies work, and any other film in which the main character buys a giraffe and a chimp would spend at least a couple scenes diving deeper into what’s going on. But anyone just wanting to watch a pretty good impression of Jackson (done by his nephew Jaafar Jackson) as he moonwalks and sings the hits will be pleased with this.
For people like me that aren’t all that into the music, I had to find enjoyment elsewhere, which is where Colman Domingo skulks into the picture. Fixed with a pretty crazy-looking set of contact lenses, Domingo is far and away the best part of this film. Much like Michael, there isn’t really any exploration of his character. He starts off the film as a demanding, controlling prick, and he ends the film the same way. But Domingo is such a presence that I didn’t mind. Hell, I enjoyed every one of those Joe Jackson jump scares when Michael would be coming home and then - violin screech - it’s Joe going through records in the bedroom! And his scene with Deon Cole as Don King was easily my favorite moment in the entire film. It’s as if they had a behind-the-scenes competition to see who could make the most weird grunts and whatnot while they smoked cigars and made terrible deals.
But that’s just me. Perhaps I should take Bubbles’s advice from the John Mulaney interview and “Just listen to the music.” That’s what most of the audience is doing, and they seem to be enjoying themselves. But you can’t do this with every movie or franchise. You can’t make yourself like something unless you already love the subject material. But thinking about how I am with Star Wars helped me understand how so many people could love this forgettable (in my opinion, of course) fluff piece that virtually ignores what Michael Jackson is just as famous for at this point. To each their own fandom. At least I got a few kicks out of goblin Joe Jackson.
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