Michael

Lionsgate

The idea of a Michael Jackson biopic where he’s played by his own, similar-looking nephew seemed like an interesting experiment. Unfortunately, it’s a failed one.

Critic reviews have come in for Michael, the film in question, and it is being panned almost universally, with a disastrous 26% Rotten Tomatoes score. That’s with dozens of critics chiming in, not just a handful, and that makes it one of the worst-rated biopics in recent memory. Among other recent ones:

• A Complete Unknown (Bob Dylan, played by Timothy Chalamet) – 79%
• Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) – 97%
• Priscilla (played by Cailee Spaeny) – 84%
• The Smashing Machine (Mark Kerr, played by Dwayne Johnson) – 71%
• Christy (Christy Martin, played by Sydney Sweeney) – 67%
• Deliver Me From Nowhere (Bruce Springsteen, played by Jeremy Allen White) – 61%
• The Apprentice (Donald Trump, played by Sebastian Stan) – 72%
• The Iron Claw (The Von Erich Family) – 89%
• Ferrari (Enzo Ferrari, played by Adam Driver) – 73%

As you can see, Michael is below all of them, and is the company of:

• Back to Black (Amy Winehouse, played by Marisa Abela) – 35%
• Reagan (Ronald Regan, played by Dennis Quaid) – 18%

Jafaar Jackson is likely the least-known name on this entire list, despite his famous last name, though he’s supported by the likes of Miles Teller, Nia Long and back-to-back Best Actor Oscar nominee Colman Domingo. And it’s directed by Training Day’s Antoine Fuqua.

But it just did not pan out. The musical and dance numbers are being praised, but at the expense of many critics saying that’s all the movie offers. Jackson’s performance, as well, does not seem to be at fault, but the entire thing just does not work as a feature film. Some excerpts:

• Globe and Mail: “There is just not enough of a movie to hang those showstopping numbers on. Just as all the note-perfect moves and movie-star magic of a sensational Jaafar Jackson are not enough to ensure his uncle’s story is given the cinematic life that it deserves.”
• The Times UK: “The narrative is an aimless Wiki-plod through Jackson’s back catalogue, first with the Jackson 5 and then his early solo career. His siblings are negligible as characters and there’s a conspicuous vacuum where Janet Jackson should have been.”
• The Nightly: “Michael is so awful at times, you risk physically collapsing into yourself from all the cringing.”

Yeesh. And many of these don’t just skew negative, they are flat-out D-grades or 1/5 star scores. If critics didn’t like it, they really didn’t like it. This is after I saw social media early takes that Michael is “the best musical biopic of all time.” No accounting for taste, I suppose.

Whether Michael is good or not will not necessarily correlate with poor performance at the box office. Michael is out in three days on April 24, and is a large-scale global release for one of the most famous artists in history, if not the most famous. Don’t count it out.

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