I am not one of those who think the abuse allegations necessarily have to be included in a film about the king of pop. As with the thrilling West End show MJ: the Musical, it can make sense for a production about Michael Jackson to focus on the work. Stick to the music that once lost me a girlfriend and the dance move that Fred Astaire said was the best he had ever seen and you have something compelling.
Yet even though this film provides both, it wants also to be a biography, and on that score it falls flat on its face. In the title role Michael Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson acquits himself well in the live-show scenes where he dances brilliantly. And where Jaafar sounds uncannily like Michael that is because it is often Michael’s voice we hear. So if, like me, you were gripped by the electrical charge of Wanna’ be Startin’ Something and Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, the music is all you need for as long as it lasts.
Its pulse is instantly addictive. As a teenager I couldn’t kick the crack of pop even when asked by a girl I liked what music I listened to. To a Joy Division fan like her, my answer was like offering Jeffrey Archer in a conversation about books. She went her way and I would have moonwalked mine if I could.
If Jackson was too successful to be counter-culturally cool this film will do nothing to add Joy Division fans to his disciples. Director Antoine Fuqua presents the star as a latter-day saint, though not the evangelical kind. He is kind to children, if oddly infantile with them. On more than one occasion the camera stays close to Jackson as he reveals inner-most thoughts to a confidant, only for it pull back and reveal that Jackson is talking to his lama or chimpanzee.
Yet other than a few raised eyebrows from his family when he set up home in a sprawling homestead converted into a zoo, nothing acknowledges the profound sadness of someone whose best friends are animals.
The narrative plods along chronologically from the 1960s when Michael was regularly beaten by his belt-wielding father Joseph (played by an intimidating Colman Domingo), a steel mill worker who bullied his sons into becoming the Jackson 5. As Michael’s star rises so does his need to escape his father. Don Black’s hit Ben is the soundtrack to Michael beginning at last to assert the control he needs to do his own stuff.
This includes making the Thriller album. The recreation of the title song horror video is superbly done but offers little more than you would get from watching the original. You could say the same of the live-show performances.
In his first acting role, Jaafar (son of Jermaine Jackson) keeps to a narrow range of shallow emotions. The default is a sweet smile. Sometimes he gets upset. The occasion when his hair accidently catches fire during a shoot for a Pepsi advert is horrific. But he is soon hanging out with other patients in hospital and we are back to this largely redacted bland hagiography that offers a fake messiah rather than a real man.
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.