Cert – 12, Run-time – 2 hours 7 minutes, Director – Antoine Fuqua
Michael Jackson (Jaafar Jackson) rises from the control of his abusive father (Colman Domingo) to create his own music and become one of the biggest selling musical artists of all time.
Whilst Michael Jackson (Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson) thinks about his entire life before he goes on stage one of the first things he reflects on is how multiple people refer to his vocal talents as a God-given gift. Only later does this come into full fruition as at a key turning point for him and his career he looks to his bodyguard (KeiLyn Durrel Jones) and starts to speak as if he genuinely believes he’s Christ. The biopic of the King of Pop appears to believe that he can do no wrong, everything is an iconic and motivational moment. Whilst sidestepping some conventions there are still on display as we see the rise to independent success of not Michael Jackson, or even Michael, but Generic Musician Biopic Protagonist.
With some form of producing credit for most of Jackson’s surviving family there’s a smear of sanitisation from start to finish. To the point that there seems to be nothing personal on display for the titular icon. Not in terms of controversies and accusations about Jackson which have plagued the film’s production and build-up to release (and many early reactions to it, too) – early versions of the film dealt, according to producer Graham King in “unbiased” manner, with accusations of child sexual abuse until legal clauses, one which forbade any mention of one of Jackson’s accusers in the film, led to rewrites and reshoots in 2025 – but simply in terms of personal feelings about almost anything. To call the film Michael may be to get across how famous he became, that we know who he is from just his first name. In terms of what we see on screen it’s a signifier of just how utterly bland he and his story are made to seem.
Conventions are worn before they’re even properly tread. Colman Domingo tries to give something to Jackson’s abusive father and childhood (young Michael is played by Juliano Valdi) manager during his time with the Jackson 5/ Jacksons, but with how one-dimensionally the scenes are written even he struggles to create an emotional hit. Instead, the film wishes to focus on the music. A series of concert performances and general creations of songs moving from one to the other with a growing feeling of ‘if they like the songs they’ll like the film.’
The more performances or recreations of music videos we get the more things start to feel as if they’re meant to sell music rather than properly tell a story of the artist, or what inspired some of their biggest songs – the closest is a slight spark towards the start of a sequence about Beat It which quickly delves into another strand about how great a dancer Jackson was. Jaafar Jackson gives a solid enough performance and certainly has the moves, his uncle’s vocals are dubbed into musical performances, but doesn’t have the screenplay to create any emotion.
Things move along for two hours with increasingly bland style. Overfamiliar and played far too safe, as if afraid to mention anything negative at all. The more music is put at the centre rather than Jackson himself the more disinterested the film feels in him, or actually telling a story. It simply likes his music. It’s much like Jackson’s connection to Peter Pan, cartoons and classic comedy like Chaplin or the Three Stooges. We see him picking up the former multiple times throughout the film, having read the book – or rather enjoyed looking at the pictures – since childhood, but his connection seems very surface level and unexplored, the name Neverland seems to be more striking than anything to do with the place itself. With Michael it’s the name of the artist and his music that seems most striking for those behind it rather than who he was as a person.
A bland set of conventions with very little in the way of personal story for the central figure, the focus of Michael is solely on the name and music. You could get more insight, and just as many tracks, listening to a greatest hits album.
Just A Little Bit Random 