I am a Michael Jackson fan. A real one. I grew up with the music, I know the albums, I know the moves, I know the mythology. So when this film was announced I was not cautious about it, I was excited. I wanted to see his story told properly on screen, with the full weight of who he was and what he meant. What I got was two hours of a marble statue standing in front of a spotlight while someone played his songs in the background.
Michael is one of the most disappointing films I have seen in a long time. Not because it is unwatchable. It is not. But because it had everything it needed to be something great and chose to be nothing instead.
Jaafar Jackson
Let us start with the lead. Jaafar Jackson is Michael Jackson's nephew, and the casting decision was clearly made for proximity rather than ability. The resemblance is there in moments, particularly in the dancing, which is the one area where the film comes alive. But as an actor he has no charisma. None. He plays Michael as a passive, gentle presence that drifts through scenes without leaving any impression. Every great biopic performance requires the actor to find something alive and specific inside the person they are playing. Jaafar never finds it. He plays a pose, not a person.
Michael Jackson was one of the most complicated, contradictory, fascinating human beings of the twentieth century. That is the film I wanted to see. Instead we got a saint. A statue. A figure with no shadow and no depth.
And this is a problem that runs through the entire film. Michael Jackson was one of the most complicated, contradictory, fascinating human beings of the twentieth century. A man shaped by abuse, by extraordinary talent, by fame that arrived before he could understand what it meant, by a public identity that bore almost no relationship to whatever was happening inside him. That is the film I wanted to see. Instead we got a saint. A statue. A figure with no shadow and no depth.
The Estate Problem
This film was approved and authorised by the Jackson estate. The moment you know that, you know what you are going to get. The scandals are not mentioned. The complexity is erased. The darkness is smoothed away. What remains is a highlights reel of the good parts, presented as though nothing complicated ever happened. It is not a biography. It is a press release.
Antoine Fuqua is a capable director and John Logan is a capable writer, and both of them have been put in a box and told not to move. You can feel them straining against it in places. It does not help. The film wants you to feel that Michael Jackson was an angel who suffered unfairly. A film that refuses to engage with any of the harder questions about who he was is not a portrait. It is a monument. Monuments are not interesting.
Ending Mid-Life
The film ends at the Bad tour in the late 1980s. Michael Jackson died in 2009. The most complex, most painful, most interesting decades of his life are simply not in this film. It is the equivalent of a Beethoven biopic that ends before the deafness. You leave the cinema feeling cheated, not just of the story, but of any real attempt to understand the man.
What Works
The dancing works. Every time Jaafar moves on stage, the film briefly becomes what it should have been throughout. The concert sequences have genuine energy and genuine awe. The production design is immaculate. Colman Domingo does what he can with Joe Jackson but is given so little real material to work with that his performance ends up feeling cartoonishly villainous rather than genuinely frightening. Nia Long as Katherine Jackson is warm and completely underused.
The Verdict
Michael is a film that Michael Jackson himself might have approved, which is exactly its problem. It is beautiful and empty and safe. It shows you the performance and hides the person.
I wanted to understand the King of Pop. I left understanding nothing I did not already know. For a fan this is not just a disappointment. It is a waste.