A new Michael Jackson biopic raises a familiar question… do audiences actually want the truth, or just a great show?
This week, my co-host Sarah Hanlon and I unpack the new film Michael and the growing trend of biopics that trade accuracy for spectacle. When a story as complex as Michael Jackson’s gets streamlined into a crowd-pleasing concert experience, what gets lost… and does it even matter?
They explore the art vs. artist debate, the power of nostalgia, and why some cultural icons remain untouchable—no matter how complicated their legacy becomes.
It’s a conversation about storytelling, memory, and the uncomfortable space where fact and entertainment collide.
I sit with host Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to talk about where people are getting their news, the first lady of “Heated Rivalry” fans, Bob Seger Bars and I review the musical biopic “Michael.”
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make your bed. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the biopic “Michael,” the grounded fairy tale “The Bearded Girl” and the action thriller “Fuze.”
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” to talk about the latest lawsuit regarding Amy Winehouse, why Sydney Sweeney was cut from “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and some other surprising stars who were excised from famous movies. Then, I review the new biopic “Michael” and suggest some cocktails top enjoy while watching the movie.
SYNOPSIS: Jaafar Jackson, son of Jackson 5 member Jermaine Jackson, and nephew to Michael Jackson, plays his King of Pop uncle in the flashy new biopic “Michael.”
CAST: Jaafar Jackson, Nia Long, Laura Harrier, Juliano Krue Valdi, Miles Teller, Colman Domingo. Directed by Antoine Fuqua.
REVIEW: Michael Jackson’s rise to fame and the accompanying tribulations are given a high gloss treatment in “Michael.” From the hardscrabble upbringing in Gary, Indiana and the Jackson 5 to a stratospheric solo career and the isolation of fame, it’s a Wikipedia page come to life and projected on the screen.
The front row seat to the life and (most of) the legacy of Michael Jackson (Juliano Krue Valdi as young Michael. Jaafar Jackson as adult Michael) begins with the well documented rise of the Jackson 5 and the physical and emotional abuse at the hand of Michael’s controlling father Joe (Colman Domingo). “Let me tell you something,” says Joe. “In this life, you’re either a winner or you’re a loser.”
The road to stardom begins when Motown founder Barry Gordy (Larenz Tate) signs the band and helps launch the Jackson 5 to national stardom.
From Joseph and Katherine Jackson’s (Nia Long) humble living room to MTV and the world’s biggest stages, Jackson grows up in public, personally and professionally, amid a swirl of triumphs and personal struggles.
Before you ask, yes, Bubbles makes an appearance in “Michael.” He’s a CGI version of the chimp once kept by Michael Jackson as a pet, but he feels about as real as anything else in this crowd-pleasingly tuneful but sanitized and safe biopic.
The story of triumph over adversity, of genius and creative vision, begins in a dark place. Joseph Jackson, father and manager of Michael Jackson and The Jacksons, played with malignant vigor by Colman Domingo, puts his five sons through their paces with the intensity of a Marine drill sergeant. These early, ugly scenes of abuse hit hard as young Michael is driven to perfection at the end of his father’s belt.
But what begins as a hard-hitting biography soon settles into a more familiar greatest hits style movie propped up by Jackson’s prodigious back catalogue of music. Director Antoine Fuqua, working from a clichéd script by John Logan, settles into authorized biography rhythm, highlighting Jackson’s many successes without ever going deep.
In the film’s final half hour, Fuqua decides to give up on the story completely. “Michael,” much to the delight of the audience I saw thew film with, shifts from biopic to concert film with several show-stopping performances from Jaafar Jackson.
Jackson, who spent two years training for the role, nails his paternal uncle’s physicality, especially in the elaborate musical numbers, like the dramatization of the making of the “Thriller” video, and concert scenes.
A replication of the electrifying debut of M.J.’s moonwalk on the “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever” special is almost as exciting as it was when Michael did it in 1983. It’s a blast of loud and proud nostalgia that plays really well in IMAX, as do most of the musical performances.
What’s missing is insight. It’s all uplift as Michael, robbed of his childhood, finds his way through the world, shedding the influence of his father in favor of charting his own course to superstardom.
As with other authorized music biographies like “Elvis” or “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the story’s rough edges are mostly shaved away. The thorny issue of the 1993 sexual assault allegation was addressed in the film’s original cut but had to be scrapped due to a legal agreement with the accuser’s family. According to the Wall Street Journal, a sequel is already in the works for 2027 or 2028 that will address those allegations.
Jackson was a complicated figure, but the movie isn’t interested in exploring those complications in a meaningful way.
We see close-ups of his favorite book, a children’s picture book of “Peter Pan.” We learn of his admiration for Charlie Chaplin but virtually nothing about his relationship with his brothers, who are treated like extras in the story, the evolution of his signature fashion style or the inspiration for his songs, save for “Thriller,” which seems to have been initiated by Vincent Price’s “House of Wax.” Janet Jackson fans may also be left wondering why there is no mention of her.
“Michael” is beyond lightweight. It’s a “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” style music bio, except for when it is in motion; singing and dancing. As a biography, it’s a pretty good concert film. The musical numbers are terrific, nicely performed by Jaafar Jackson, whose mimicry of his uncle’s signature moves is spot on. These sequences are head-turners and should please fans looking for a blast of in-your-face nostalgia.
Michael Jackson is one of the biggest selling performers of all time, and one of the most documented, so perhaps there aren’t any revelations to be had seventeen years after his death. But it is a shame that the adventurous spirit that characterized the superstar’s best work is missing from the film.
If a bomb dropped on A&M Recording Studios in Hollywood on January 28, 1985, the Billboard charts may never have recovered. Save for superstars Prince and Madonna, the entirety of American pop royalty, 46 performers in total, gathered to check their egos at the door, and record “We Are the World,” the American answer to Bob Geldof’s supergroup charity single “Do They Know it’s Christmas?”
The song became the fastest-selling U.S. pop single in history, selling 20 million copies, and raising tens-of-millions for humanitarian aid under the umbrella of United Support of Artists for Africa (USA for Africa). A new documentary called “The Greatest Night in Pop,” now streaming on Netflix, takes us behind the scenes of the historic recording session.
In the opening third of the film, director Bao Nguyen sets the stage, “Behind the Music” style, using archival footage and new talking head interviews with the major players, to teleport the viewer back to the heady days of the original Macintosh personal computer and when “Purple Rain” made Prince the first artist to score a number one song, album and movie at the same time in North America.
Music icon and activist Harry Belafonte noted the success of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” to raise awareness and funds to fight famine in Africa, and put into motion the idea that would become “We Are the World.” In short order, fundraiser and music agent Ken Kragen came on board, raided his Rolodex, and brought together Lionel Ritchie, Michael Jackson and producer Quincy Jones to create a song to be sung by an all-star choir.
From the writing of the tune and the machinations involved in recruiting the a-list talent, made somewhat easier by scheduling the session after the American Music Awards ceremony when virtually the entire music industry was in Los Angeles for the event, to the placement of the microphones and Jones’s famous “Check your ego at the door” sign, Nguyen breezes through the events leading up to the actual recording.
It is a straightforward setting of the scene, that leads into the remarkable footage taken on the night, as some of the most famous people in the world came together to learn and record a song while also shooting the music video that would accompany the release.
It’s here the documentary becomes something more than an episode of “I Love the ‘80s.” The footage unveils the effort, the raw talent and spirit of camaraderie among the legends, who almost immediately becomes starstruck fans, asking their idols for autographs in between takes and expressing shyness about singing in front of music legends like Ray Charles and Bob Dylan.
There are funny moments—Cyndi Lauper’s many necklaces are identified as the strange sound ruining take after take—some unexpected ones—Bob Dylan’s vocal insecurity, for instance—and touching scenes of the artists overcome by emotion, including Diana Ross who cried when it was all done. “I don’t want this to be over,” she said as equipment is packed up around her.
At the helm is Jones. To manage the talent, the egos and insecurity of a roomful of superstars, Huey Lewis notes, “You gotta be more than a great musician, you have to be a psychiatrist,” and it is remarkable to watch Jones mollycoddle, push and prod this group. He knows what he wants and always seems to know how to get it. It’s a remarkable peak into the work of a virtuoso.
“The Greatest Night in Pop” is an exercise in nostalgia and certainly doesn’t reinvent the music documentary form, but the work of the collected musicians on that one special night remains as inspiring today as it was thirty-nine years ago.
This week the world gets a look at the greatest concert that never was, the film of Michael Jackson’s rehearsals for his comeback tour. Is “This is It” a great film? No, but like the best concert films it works because it captures a time and performance that will never be duplicated.
Cobbled together from rehearsal footage taken as he prepared for a series of sold-out shows in London and destined for the singer’s private library, it presents an unvarnished look at the creative process leading up to opening night. It’s not a polished concert film like “Stop Making Sense” or “Woodstock.” It’s a document of a work in process. Because this footage was never meant to be seen by anyone other than Jackson’s inner circle it’s rough, with raw performances and uninspired, often shaky camerawork. It isn’t the usual slickly produced product we would expect from the Jackson camp, and as such has a ring of authenticity to it that you don’t get in other authorized music films.
It’s unlikely that MJ would have approved of the film’s vision. We get to see how meticulous a performer he was, from giving his band’s bass player a funky vocal interpretation of how he wanted a certain riff to sound, to the way he instructs director and choreographer Kenny Ortega on how to add more sizzle to the show’s set pieces but dance wise there’s nothing as awe inspiring as the unveiling of the moon walk on the “Motown Special.” He seems to be working at half speed, as though he was tired, or saving his energy for the audience or, as history shows us, perhaps not well. It’s rawer Jackson than we’re used to—it’s the work of a great artist who is finding his feet after a long absence from the stage.
There are some flashy moments. We see footage of MJ dropped into a montage of 40s era movies starring Rita Heyworth, Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney as an intro to “Smooth Criminal” and the 3-D “Thriller” intro is very cool, but for my money it’s the simpler stuff that really sells the show; the smile that grows on his face after a successful run through of “They Don’t Really Care About Us” or the way he guides the band during the “Human Nature” rehearsal. “Play it like you’re dragging yourself out of bed,” he says to the keyboard player Michael Bearden. Those are the small moments that because Jackson was such an outsized performer, were often missed in the past.
Given the tabloid element that has always been part of Jackson’s legacy it’s impossible to watch “This is It” without noticing how painfully thin he is during much of the film, and reading some ominous foreshadowing into his opening statement: “I’ll be performing the songs my fans want to hear—this is the final curtain call.” Luckily the movie, like the best memorials isn’t about Jackson’s death, but his life and his talent.
It’s also a reminder of what was lost. On stage Jackson was a great performer. Life may have been difficult for him but under a spotlight he sparkled and it’s a shame that we’ll never see the finished “This is It” live shows. From what we see in the movie it looks like it would have been part rock concert, part Broadway show part Busby Berkley spectacle—Jackson says he wanted to take the audience “places they’ve never been before; show them talent they’ve never seen before. ” It’s a good movie, it would have been an incredible concert.
