There is a special kind of Hollywood arrogance that assumes audiences will pay to watch a Wikipedia page set to music. The Michael Jackson biopic Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson, has arrived in theaters to the kind of critical drubbing usually reserved for films that accidentally release their rough cuts. Reviewers are calling it a “ghoulish, soulless cash grab,” a “filmed playlist in search of a story,” and the kind of hagiography that would make North Korean state media blush.
The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey gave it one star, describing the film as a “ghoulish, soulless cash grab” that recreates moments everyone has already seen—Thriller, the Pepsi burn incident, the Motown 25 performance—without offering any insight into the man behind the glove. The Guardian called it “a frustratingly shallow, inert picture, a kind of cruise-ship entertainment,” noting that it can’t quite bring itself to show Jackson as an abuse victim brutalized by his father, perhaps because that would require acknowledging cause and effect in a life that the film prefers to present as a triumph montage.
RogerEbert.com was even more direct, declaring that “Michael isn’t a movie. It’s a filmed playlist in search of a story.” The review points out that the Jackson siblings serve as executive producers, meaning every frame carries the fingerprints of a family with a vested interest in controlling the narrative. The result is a film that plays like a 127-minute trailer, assembling every music-movie cliché into a chronological slideshow that leaps from 1966 to 1988 without reflection, pause, or any interest in complexity.
The most damning criticism isn’t what the film includes—it’s what it omits. The movie stops in 1988, conveniently before the difficult decades that followed. There is no mention of the child abuse allegations that defined Jackson’s public life after 1993. There is no Janet Jackson, who reportedly declined to participate. There is no Paris Jackson, Michael’s daughter, who criticized the film on social media, stating that she read an early draft, gave notes about what was dishonest, and moved on when they weren’t addressed. “A big section of the film panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in the fantasy,” she wrote.
Director Antoine Fuqua has publicly questioned the abuse allegations, telling the New Yorker that “sometimes people do some nasty things for some money,” which is exactly the kind of statement you’d expect from someone making an estate-approved biopic. The film reportedly had to undergo $15 million in reshoots, suggesting that even the filmmakers knew something wasn’t working during production.
The result is a movie that portrays Michael as a victim and nothing else. Joe Jackson, played by Colman Domingo in what reviewers are calling the worst performance of his career, is a boogeyman of parental abuse with no dimension beyond cruelty. Michael’s brothers are glorified extras. The film doesn’t explore which sibling Michael was closest to, who he fought with, or who he laughed with—details that might actually illuminate his humanity.
Jaafar Jackson, Jermaine’s son, offers occasional glimpses of his uncle’s soul, particularly in scenes about Michael’s body dysmorphia and his identification with Peter Pan. But he’s trapped in hagiographic material that allows no flaws, no complexity, no definable traits beyond victimhood and genius. The musical sequences, which should be the film’s saving grace, are undermined by nauseating camerawork that commits the exact sin Michael chastises a cameraman about in one scene—you can’t remove the energy from the dance.
The film currently sits at 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is generous considering the venom in the reviews. It’s being compared unfavorably to Bohemian Rhapsody, which at least had the decency to be entertaining in its mediocrity, and to The Dirt, which had the self-awareness to be trashy. Michael wants to be respectable without doing the work of respectability, serious without risking offense, definitive without including anything definitive.
What audiences are left with is a $200 million screensaver—a series of pretty recreations of moments they’ve already seen on YouTube, set to songs they already own, telling them nothing they didn’t already know. The Jackson estate got the movie they wanted. The audience got the movie they deserved for showing up to a biopic produced by the subject’s own family.
Sometimes the truth really does set you free. In this case, it’s freeing you from spending fifteen dollars on a Wikipedia article with a soundtrack.
Skip the hagiography—stream Leaving Neverland or revisit Michael Jackson’s actual music videos for a more honest experience than this estate-approved fantasy.
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