“I know you’ve been waiting a long time for this. The tracks are made, the songs are ready. Let’s take it from the top!”
For a little over two hours Michael Jackson has risen from his grave. It’s not a miracle. It’s a little bit of movie magic and a performance by an actor with a little bit more at stake than the usual paycheck or quest for awards and accolades. When he decided to direct a bio-pic about Michael Jackson, Antoine Fuqua made a couple of smart choices. He hired John Logan to write the script. Logan is likely best known for Gladiator but he has a pretty impressive resume to call upon. But the wisest choice was to hire Jaafar Jackson to play the title character. And while Jackson was required to audition for the part like any other actor might be required to do, he had an edge both in getting the role and in turning it into something a little bit special. He is Michael Jackson’s nephew and the son of Jackson Five member Jermaine Jackson. So there’s certainly a lot of Jackson power in the film, and it’s all put together to pull in a whole lot of a different kind of Jacksons at the box office. So hold on tight, because this story is going to be a whirlwind.
Rock music has delivered a few bio-pic movies of late. The best of them all, in my opinion happens to be Bohemian Rhapsody, following the exploits of Queen and more particularly their late front man Freddie Mercury. Elton John has had Rocket Man. More recently a fair shot on the life of Elvis, and there’s a huge collection of films coming for each of the members of The Beatles. They all have taken different turns at the genre. I love Bohemian Rhapsody because it tells the story with a fair amount of detail and wasn’t afraid to include some of the dirt. That makes it feel so much more real to me. Rocket Man was pretty much Elton John’s fantasy version of his own life, while Elvis might have hurt itself by trying to tell the story too much through the character of Elvis’s infamous manager, The Colonel. Michael has taken a different track, and that’s going to vary your experience a little.
The film begins with Michael Jackson as the 8-year-old boy whose amazing voice lifted the family’s musical act from small county fair circuits to some of the biggest venues in the country. The film focuses on the abusive forcefulness that Michael experienced from his rather greedy father, Joseph Jackson. Casting Colman Domingo as the overbearing father was perhaps a better choice than even casting Michael’s nephew. Domingo literally steals the show, and when you have a character as big as life as Michael Jackson certainly is, that’s one hell of a performance. He’s one of the best heavies I’ve encountered in at least a few years and is already on my next year’s award watch. His brutality drives the narrative as much as the music itself. For better or worse, it’s clear that this abusive figure likely had as much to do with who Michael Jackson was as his music.
And there is where the film will either win you over or lose you a bit. The concert footage grows throughout until we’re watching full song performances. There’s a ton of energy in those performances, and I think they will have Jackson fans standing in the aisles, because this is as close as you’re ever going to get to attending a Michael Jackson concert again. Jaafar knows his uncle, and he delivers the same kind of manic energy that fans have experienced for decades from his uncle. He’s got the moves, and the audience goes wild when he starts doing his uncle’s signature moonwalk among other moves. It’s all great, but for me it’s too much. At some points the film almost becomes a concert film, but that’s not what I was most interested in seeing. It has to be a huge part of it all, no argument. But too often it dominates, and we do get cheated out of too much of Michael’s story. The film continues to beat us with his father’s abusiveness, but there are so many other aspects of this complex man’s life that are both interesting and of note. Sadly all of that is skipped over. The film ends at a huge concert in the late 80’s, and that’s as far as the film goes. It almost feels like a Part One. But there isn’t a good way to follow up, because there is human drama in those last years that is just as compelling but not quite so complimentary of Michael himself. He was a human being with great talent, but like all the rest of us human beings, he had his flaws and he had his demons. Bohemian Rhapsody wasn’t afraid to air that dirty laundry, but Michael is, and I think it suffers greatly as a result.
There are some very strong supporting performances here. Nia Long brings the film the necessary balance from Domingo’s cruelty by playing the loving mother. She carries that sadness more with her eyes than through her dialog, and she is an important counterpoint to the film’s focus. KeiLyn Durrel Jones is Bill Bray, who joins the family early as Michael’s bodyguard who becomes an important friend and a better father figure than his own father. Kendrick Sampson plays Quincy Jones, one of the truly greatest writers, producers, and musicians in the history of the industry. Jones was a huge musical influence on Jackson, and I was very pleased that this relationship was given the time and respect it deserved. No Quincy Jones? Maybe no Michael Jackson. Jackson learned at the foot of the best. Miles Teller plays John Branca, who was Michael’s legal guide over the years and also another faithful member of his inner circle.
While we get hints at what will become the future Neverland, the film refuses to actually go there. Michael’s near obsession with Peter Pan to escape his abuse gives us a glimpse of how important Neverland will become, and the animal collection starts to grow pretty early. My big issue with the films is that it plants so many seeds that we never see grow into something important. We know what those things are. Everyone does, but the film flinches, and that’s what makes this a very good film and not a great one. Many will pass the comments off as a critic who wants to throw shade on Michael Jackson. That’s not it at all. None of our stories are complete without the flaws. I’m certainly not perfect. In fact there are moments in my life where…”I’m bad”.
