As the decline of the cultural power of superhero films continues, Hollywood has been scrambling to find a new well of ‘sure thing’ blockbusters, a niche being filled by a combination of videogame adaptations and music biopics, both of which are being pumped out at a rate of knots. Into this latter category falls Michael, Antoine Fuqua’s tale of the first 30 years of the life of the King of Pop, a film clearly chasing a billion-dollar box office haul and also the biopic most clearly chasing that superhero audience as they search for something new. Everything in this glitzy but empty hagiography is built like Avengers films used to be, teasing audiences with constant ‘and remember this?!’ references, all the way to an all-CG recreation of Bubbles the chimp being shot like the arrival of Thanos.
Starting with his childhood in Gary Indiana and ending with the finale of his Bad tour at Wembley in 1988, the best thing that can be said in Michael’s favour is that it does really whip by. Fuqua keeps things in constant, rapid motion, and while that means that emotional depth is lacking, bordering on non-existent, it also stops things from ever getting boring or sluggish. That lack of depth is not just from the pacing though – there is a clear lack of drama throughout most of Michael. When he’s still a kid (played as a youngster by newcomer Juliano Valdi), there’s some affecting tragedy to his sad loneliness and treatment at the monstrous hands of his father Joseph (Colman Domingo).
Signed off as it is by the Jackson estate (and Jackson’s lawyer John Branca, whose credit as producer is presumably why he, as played by Miles Teller, gets more lines and screentime than any of Jackson’s siblings), Joseph is the permitted villain – everyone knows how much of Jackson’s strangeness was moulded by this awful patriarch. Everything else, though, has to be kept as gently inoffensive as possible, which is bland at best and cloying at worst – Jackson’s obsession with his childish toys and exotic pets comes across as much creepier than the film seems to intend. As for the allegations…well that’s all left for a potential sequel (‘his story continues’ reads the amusingly threatening final title card).
This convenient cowardice isn’t *entirely* the fault of Fuqua and writer John Logan – apparently a finale involving the Chandler family, the first to accuse Jackson of molestation, was written and even shot before having to be scrapped for legal reasons, which might also explain why Michael doesn’t really have a third act. The last 20 minutes or so are pure concert re-enactment with a lot of big sound but not a lot of visual pizzazz and a real lack of crescendo.
The music defines the film, naturally, but Fuqua shoots every performance near-identically; a close-up of Jackson’s signature footwork here, a cut to an overwhelmed audience member there, rinse and repeat over and over without ever getting a sense of progression or place. It’s toe-tapping stuff, undeniably, but most of the stuff that works – the songs, the music videos etc – are stuff the film gets for free without adding anything to them.
The adult Michael is played by the man’s actual nephew Jaafar, a casting choice that is clearly fan-pandering nepotism but also, to be honest, the only way this could have worked. The uncanny likeness is there without the production having to resort to egregious prosthetics or VFX (Domingo as Joseph doesn’t get so lucky, his entire performance buried beneath his head-enlarging makeup) and Jackson-as-Jackson does all he can with the incredibly thin material he’s given. As judged by the packed house I saw this in and the not-negligible applause that audience gave at the end of it, Michael is exactly what the superfans wanted and, financially, will probably do exactly as its studio wants but, even for this genre, this is flimsy stuff.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 