Synopsis: Chronicles the rise of Michael Jackson—from child prodigy with the Jackson 5 to a driven, visionary artist whose ambition transformed him into the world’s greatest entertainer.
Stars: Jafar Jackson, Juliano Valdi, Colman Domingo, Nia Long, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, Laura Harrier, Miles Teller, Mike Myers, Larenz Tate
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 127 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: Antoine Fuqua’s long-delayed Michael Jackson biopic is a legally-constrained, estate-approved celebration rather than a deep dive, and Jaafar Jackson is the reason you still need to see it. One of the screen debuts of the year.
Michael Review: Legacy, Edited
The biggest question hanging over Michael, Antoine Fuqua‘s long-gestating Michael Jackson biopic, isn’t whether it’s a good movie. It’s whether you can review it like a movie — or whether the shadow it arrives under is too big to step out from. I’ve decided to meet the film where it is, not where it isn’t. Every biopic is someone’s version of a life, and this one happens to be the Jackson family‘s version, shepherded by the estate, legally blocked from depicting certain chapters, and shaped by reshoots that ballooned the budget past $200 million. Knowing all of that going in, I took the film on its own terms. Your mileage may vary, and that’s fair.
What's On Screen Is Genuinely Something
Let’s start with what works, because a lot does. Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s twenty-nine-year-old nephew and the son of Jermaine,, plays his uncle in his screen debut, and he is the film. The moves, the voice (a seamless blend of Michael’s own recordings and Jaafar’s singing), the controlled grace of the physical performance. It’s all there, and none of it reads as impression. The interior life is the revelation. Jaafar finds the loneliness and the hunger and the child who was never allowed to be one, and he plays it without ever tipping into the ghoulish pale-wig-and-fedora shorthand that trips up most Jackson portrayals. This is acting, not mimicry, and the awards conversation around it is going to be real.
As young Michael, Juliano Valdi is equally essential. The film needs us to understand the kid before we can ever approach the man, and Valdi delivers. He’s a dynamic, charismatic performer whose lip-syncing to the original Jackson 5 vocals is better than a lot of working pop stars manage with their own tracks. The handoff between the two actors, when it comes, is clean enough that you barely notice it happening.
The Spectacle Carries It
What saves Michael from slipping into full-on image polishing is the craft. Cinematographer Dion Beebe (Chicago) shoots the performances full-body the way Jackson preferred, and the musical set pieces are the best thing about the film. The “Thriller” dance break is a genuine IMAX event. The “Beat It” recreation earns every minute of its length, showing how Jackson did his homework — learning street dance from the people who actually invented it.
The makeup and costume teams pull off the aging of Jaafar from teenage Michael to 1988 Bad-tour Michael with a subtlety that sneaks up on you. By the final act, the work is nearly complete, and the results are frequently astonishing — more than a little eerie, too. Look up a recent photo of Jaafar after the credits roll and the scale of the team’s achievement comes into focus.
Fuqua (The Magnificent Seven) is a utilitarian director at heart, and his work here is confident on stage and competent off it. John Logan wrote the screenplay, with additional uncredited literary material from Kenya Barris and Peter Saji, though given the amount of reshooting and restructuring the film went through, it’s hard to know whose fingerprints are on what. On the editing side, four cutters share credit, with John Ottman and Harry Yoon doing the heaviest lifting. Between them, they’ve stitched something coherent out of the film’s multiple versions. The closing card — “His Story Continues” (which, yes, should almost certainly have been “HIStory Continues”) — leaves the door open for the sequel that’s reportedly already being discussed.
Colman Domingo Brings the Weight
I went in thinking Colman Domingo (Rustin) was a lock for a Supporting Actor nomination as patriarch Joe Jackson, and he’s as compelling as you’d expect. The makeup and hair team do extraordinary work turning him into a near-exact match for the real Joe. In Joe, Domingo finds something harder to watch than simple cruelty — a man who genuinely believed the damage he was causing was love. What holds him back from the full awards push, I suspect, is the absence of the one or two showstopper scenes he needs. He’s great throughout without ever quite getting his Oscar clip.
Nia Long (47 Meters Down: Uncaged) has the trickier assignment as Katherine Jackson. The film presents a version of Katherine the family clearly wants preserved, and those who know the longer story understand it’s softer than the full picture. Long plays her serenely, which is a smart choice either way — and it’s impossible to watch her and not wonder if Michael modeled his own soft-spoken cadence on hers.
Miles Teller (Top Gun: Maverick) shows up in a shaggy wig as Michael’s lawyer John Branca, and Mike Myers (Bohemian Rhapsody) appears in prosthetic eyebrows that look like they’re considering leaving the room. KeiLyn Durrel Jones (Fear the Night) gets a small but meaningful part as bodyguard Bill Bray. Jones makes Bray a presence more than a performance, which is exactly right for a character whose power was proximity.
What's Missing Is Also the Story
Now we have to discuss where it gets complicated. The abuse allegations are absent — not by choice, but because of a settlement clause with accuser Jordan Chandler that legally barred the filmmakers from depicting or referencing him. That’s a matter of public record, and it forced significant reshoots; the reshoots added an estimated $50 million to the budget, a cost the Jackson estate covered in full.
What’s harder to explain is the sheer scale of everything else that got omitted. Where is Diana Ross, the mentor Michael idolized? Where are Whitney Houston and Shirley Temple, two of his closest celebrity friendships? Where is The Wiz, a pivotal career moment that doesn’t even get a passing reference? He sings “Ben” without a single mention of the film it came from, or of his deep love for animals — a beat that basically writes itself and is simply skipped. (Have no fear, Bubbles the chimp does appear…and vanishes just as quickly.)
And then there are the two biggest absences of all. The first is “We Are the World,” a song Michael co-wrote with Lionel Richie. It sold more than 20 million physical copies, making it the eighth-best-selling single of all time, and it remains one of the defining cultural moments of the 1980s. The film doesn’t touch it. That’s not a creative choice I can defend.
The second is the family itself. The estate’s fingerprints are all over the shape of the story. Though she has offered some faint praise for the finished film, Janet Jackson doesn’t exist in Michael at all. Further, siblings who aren’t credited as executive producers (Randy, Rebbie, Janet) have been neatly edited out of the family tree. This is a film that loves Michael Jackson more than it’s able to look at him. That’s its limitation, and it’s not an accident.
Meet the Movie Where It Is
Michael is a remembrance, not an excavation of the past. The people who are angry it’s a celebration of sorts are going to be angry whether I tell them to be or not, and the people looking for a reckoning are going to have to wait for a different film. What this movie offers is Jaafar Jackson giving one of the performances of the year, musical sequences shot like events, and a Behind the Music–style run through a catalog that genuinely did change popular music forever. That’s not a small thing. It’s also not everything. Both of those can be true.
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