MICHAEL Review

I want to start with a confession. When I heard Antoine Fuqua was making a Michael Jackson biopic, my first instinct was a very long, very tired sigh. We all know this story, We lived that story, Michael Jackson was so famous, so relentlessly documented, so mythologised in real time that a biopic feels almost redndant bedore it begins. And yet here I am, telling you that Michael got me. Not completely, not unconditionally, but genuinely.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. The film skips his allegations entirely, They are not mentioned, not hinted at, not addressed in a single frame. For a movie about one of the most controversial figures in pop history, that is a staggering omission, and serious film lovers will feel its absence like a missing tooth.

What Fuqua gives us instead is a story about one specific wound: Joe Jackson, Michael's father, played by Colman's Domingo under a mountain of prosthetics, running family rehearsals like a man auditioning for a role in a horror film. It is a narrower story than Michal Jackson's life deserves. But within those limits, it works.

The film opens in Gary, Indiana in 1966, with young Michael already a tiny, terrifyingly gifted kid who clearly has no idea how to talk to other children and has decided performing is a perfectly reasonable substitute for human connection. Honestly, relatable. By the time we jump to the late seventies and the Off the Wall era, Jaafar Jackson has taken over the role, and this is where everything clicks into place.

Jaafar is Michael's actual nephew. He had never acted in a film before. Casting him was either an act of inspired brilliance or a spectacular gamble, and I am delighted to report it is the former. He does not do a cheap impersonation. He inhabits something real: that strange, captivating mixture of shyness and total command that made Michael Jackson the most watchable person on the planet. When he performs, you stop thinking about the film and just watch. That is rarer than it sounds.

The performance sequences are where Michael genuinely earns its place. The Motown 25 "Billie Jean" scene is electric in a way that makes you understand, in your bones, why the world lost its mind over this man. There is also a quieter scene where Michael wanders into an LA club and starts sketching out the choreography for "Beat It" by watching how the people around him actually move, and it is one of the most genuinely thrilling moments I have seen in a music biopic in years. It shows you an artist at work, not a legend being constructed for your consumption.

The weaknesses are real though. The montages pile up. Mike Myers shows up as a record executive and is fine but feels like a slightly confused choice. Miles Teller, playing lawyer John Branca, does good work with a role that the script never quite decides what to do with. And the ending, which essentially says "stay tuned for part two", would be insufferable if the film had not earned a little goodwill by then.

Michael is not the definitive Michael Jackson film. That film has not been made yet, possibly because nobody is quite brave enough to make it. What this is, though, is a warm, well-crafted, occasionally thrilling portrait of an artist becoming himself, anchored by a debut performance that is genuinely special.

It will not tell you everything. But it will remind you, viscerally, why any of this mattered in the first place.

🍿 SCORE = 74/100