Michael
James Brown
The first image of Michael is not childhood or trauma, but worship: a stage, a spotlight, and a crowd roaring for the King of Pop. Michael Jackson steps onto a concert stage, swallowed by light and deafening chants from fans who sound less like an audience and more like an approaching storm. Then the film cuts backward, fast and clean, to the beginning, as if to say that every moonwalk, sequined glove, scream, and tabloid headline grew from a child pushed toward history before he could understand its price.
That frame gives the film momentum. It also gives it a problem. Michael wants to explain the man, defend the artist, and package the legend in one polished biopic. At its best, it does what Ray did so well. It finds music inside discipline, trauma, hunger, and invention. Like Ray Charles in Taylor Hackford’s film, Michael Jackson becomes both prodigy and prisoner. The stage frees him. The business traps him. The family saves him, then wounds him.
Jaafar Jackson has the impossible assignment, and he meets it with a graceful seriousness. He does not merely imitate the angles, spins, and vocal lifts. He studies the shyness between them. His performance is strongest when it shows Michael listening: to producers, to brothers, to applause, to his own private terror. Those quiet moments make the bigger musical scenes matter.
Colman Domingo’s Joseph Jackson could have been a blunt villain. The story almost invites it. Joseph is strict, heavy-handed, and abusive. Yet Domingo finds a harder truth. This father can be cruel and still believe he is building a future. He can frighten his children and still love them. More importantly, the family seems to know that love, even when it comes wrapped in fear. Domingo communicates that contradiction in limited screen time. That is acting, not mimicry.
"Michael" honors Michael the icon, but organizes Michael the man into approved chapters.
The costumes are outstanding. Costume designer Marci Rodgers (BlacKKKlansman, Till)deserves a special nod because the clothes never feel like museum replicas. They help tell the story. The sequins, military jackets, loafers, socks, sunglasses, and stagewear do more than trigger recognition. They chart control. Young Michael is dressed by others. Adult Michael dresses like the head of a nation-state of one.
Still, Michael often explains what it should trust us to feel. The film is too on-the-nose with some of its points. When Michael begins his descent into painkiller dependency, the movie nearly circles the moment in red ink. Other bits of foreshadowing land with the same thud. You can feel the screenplay whispering, “Remember this for later.” The result is a polished film that sometimes mistakes clarity for subtlety.
Compared with Ray, Michael feels less psychologically daring. Compared with Bohemian Rhapsody, it is more elegant and better dressed, but similarly cautious around the machinery of legacy. Michael honors Michael the icon, but organizes Michael the man into approved chapters. Some historical events also appear to land out of sequence, which may help the drama but blurs the record. Fuqua knows the music can carry awe, but the movie works best when it lets silence reveal the cost of being adored too early.
Even so, Michael has real force. It understands the seduction of genius and the loneliness inside applause. It may not escape the biopic formula, but dances inside it with moments of flair.
Final Thought
"Michael" is more polished than daring, but MJ fans will love the performances.