I’d like to begin by saying that I have a complicated relationship with the musical biopic. They often hit all the same predictable story beats – the rise, the fall, the redemption arc. Often there’s vague, PG-13 friendly references to drugs or debauchery. And the trite nature of the musical biopic is a tradition that’s been going on as long as I can remember. And I’ll admit, I wasn’t exactly excited for a biopic about Michael Jackson. I can’t deny his massive impact on the world of pop music, and the multitude of musicians who were inspired by his work. I know there are plenty of people who will absolutely love this film. I’ve just never been much of a fan of Jackson’s, and all of the controversy surrounding his later years has always unsettled and disturbed me. But due to my absurd, psychotic need to not be left out of the conversation, I went to see Antoine Fuqua’s Michael in a crowded movie theater last weekend. And while I think the film will make a lot of his fans happy, my predictions about the film turned out to be accurate.

We meet Michael Jackson as a small child (Juliano Krue Valdi). His mother Katherine (Nia Long) is loving and empathetic, and his father Joe (Colman Domingo) is controlling, manipulative and flat-out evil. He creates the singing group Jackson 5 with his five sons, and uses this as a means to control their lives. When Michael (Jaafar Jackson) grows up and wants to branch out on his own career, he encounters numerous challenges, many of which are brought on by his father.

When I saw the 1980s-era studio logo for Jackson’s own Optimum Productions in front of Michael, I suspected we may really be in trouble here. A big problem I have with the musical biopic, especially one where the subject, their family and/or their estate is involved, you just know you’re not going to get the real story. You’re going to get the version of the story that they want you to see. And more often than not, you’ll get a feature length commercial for the soundtrack or the subject’s greatest hits. And that’s exactly what Michael is. It’s an empty, worshipful disaster that feels less like a loving tribute to an icon and more like two hours exhaustive, hackneyed fan service. It’s almost like a faith-based movie in a lot of ways. Audiences already buying what the film is selling will flock to it in droves, hoping that everything they want to think is affirmed and validated, and others need not apply.

Fans of Michael Jackson have always said the only person who could play Jackson in a movie would be another Jackson. And they’re probably right. We have Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s nephew, playing the iconic singer and to his credit, he’s doing a very good job, considering this is his first movie. But with the script being so surface level and so uninterested in exploring Michael’s inner life, it doesn’t give Jaafar all that much to work with, and ultimately undermines his performance. Juliano Krue Valdi, who plays young Michal, is very good, and is hitting every beat perfectly.

Colman Domingo, an actor who I expect more from, is basically doing all he’s directed to do. He’s appropriately terrifying and menacing, and he’s got that intimidating physicality in his presence, but the problem is once again with the script. Joe Jackson is written as just a flat-out purely evil villain. And sure, that’s the correct way to portray him, he was a real-life villain, but there’s no layers and no complexity to his character. No reason the film gives you as to why he did all of these things. Domingo is given one note to play and that’s it. Nia Long plays Katherine, Michael’s mother, and she also is given only one note to play. She’s warm, she’s supportive, she sits on the couch eating ice cream and watching movies with Michael. She has a good scene later on in the film where she finally lets Joe have it, but it’s too little too late, because we know Long is capable of much more than this. Miles Teller also shows up as Jackson’s attorney, John Branca, and whoever designed his wig should never work in this town again.

Oscar winning cinematographer Dion Beebe shot this, and credit where credit’s due, the film sure looks great from beginning to end. There’s a graininess to the way it’s shot that makes it look like it could’ve been made in the 1980s. And the way the musical sequences are captured can be legitimately rousing and exciting. Marci Rodgers designed the costumes, and there is a lot of precision and specificity involved in getting these iconic costumes right, a challenge Rodgers is more than game for. Production designer Barbara Ling also re-creates a lot of visual landscapes Jackson fans will no doubt be familiar with, and there’s a lot of great period detail in her sets. 

John Logan is the screenwriter at fault, and it’s a shame because he’s got a lot of impressive credits to his name – Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, among others. And it’s almost impressive how little there is here. Even in a music biopic signed off on by the family where I went in knowing I wouldn’t get the real story, I still went in hoping to get an idea of what inspired Jackson. What drove him to write the iconic music he created, and a view of his creative process.

There are a few glimpses of this in Michael – a moment during the making of his iconic Thriller video where he tells the director to shoot everything in a wide shot, where you could see the dancer’s legs and feet, harkening back to a Fred Astaire quote about how that’s the way viewers really feel a dance sequence. And that’s definitely true, especially in an era where musical films tend to do a lot of quick cuts, using bad camera angles in musical numbers to distract from a lack of proper rehearsal time, or weaknesses in the production. I mention this because it’s one of the only insightful moments to be found in this two-hour film.

In 2007, Jake Kasdan released Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a withering and scathing takedown parody of the music biopic. And in 2016, The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone kind of did this again with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. I still maintain that after Walk Hard was released, Hollywood musical biopics should have learned from it, and stopped doing all of the things it mocked. But instead, biopics have leaned into this. Biopics of Whitney Houston, Freddie Mercury, Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse, Aretha Franklin and others, over the course of the past decade or so, and now Michael, have learned nothing from Walk Hard, or any of the criticisms that consistently follow these movies. These biopics are all giving you the safe, sanitized version of the life stories of musicians who famously took chances and embraced risks. Seeing a movie about a trailblazing artist that plays it completely safe is always something that frustrates me, and sadly there seems to be no end to this trend in sight.

I have no idea if Antoine Fuqua was the correct person to direct Michael, because it seems like nobody directed Michael. Fuqua has a number of good films to his name, but seems constrained by the limits set by the Jackson family and estate. He needed the rights to the songs, and the entire film suffers for it. There are no fewer than five executive producers listed on this film with the last name Jackson – interestingly Janet and Randy Jackson apparently wanted nothing to do with this film, and aren’t even mentioned in it. In any case, Fuqua and co. will probably return for a sequel, as this film only covers Jackson’s life until the late 1980s, when he embarks on the Bad tour. So, that means the next film would have to cover some of the more difficult material in Jackson’s life story. But if this is how Fuqua and co. handled the easier part of the story, I do not have high hopes for part 2.

Michael will probably give Michael Jackson superfans everything they want from a movie about his life. There’s recreations of concerts and music videos I’m sure fans will find…well, thrilling. But the thing is, you can just go watch these iconic moments on YouTube. The film handles these musical sequences well, but that’s really all they’ve got here, and the long stretches of nothing in between the musical sequences don’t make the entire experience worth it. In my opinion, Michael is yet another unfortunate entry in Hollywood’s long trend of lazy music biopics. But at my screening, people enthusiastically applauded at the end, so if you think you’re going to like this, odds are you will probably like this. And while I’m glad everyone seems to be having a good time with it, I doubt I’ll be back for part 2.