After a rocky production process, the new Michael Jackson biopic, Michael, is finally here. Originally slated for a 2025 release, the movie was pushed back when attorneys found a clause in a settlement with Jordan Chandler, who in 1993 accused Jackson of sexual abuse and whose ensuing deal with the estate barred any depiction of him in a future film. Upon the discovery, Michael’s original ending, which focused on those allegations, was rewritten and reshot to close on a more triumphant note—a process that cost between $10 million to $15 million.
Some of Jackson’s family members along with his most diehard fans are hoping this film will salvage the King of Pop’s legacy, but that has done little to convince critics it’s good (though Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s real-life nephew who stars in the movie, might come out of it unscathed; people seem to enjoy his moonwalks). Ahead, a sampling of what reviewers are saying about Michael.
- “Forget insight into its subject’s strange, warped personal life, or his artistry as an entertainer, or his family’s famously fraught dynamics—Michael barely manages the momentum needed to propel itself between the many musical numbers that are its main reason for existing. Watching it feels more like being frog-marched through a wax museum than watching a movie, each milestone restaged with an off-putting, uncanny-valley resemblance and no interiority” — Alison Willmore, Vulture
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“Antoine Fuqua’s demi-biopic of Michael Jackson gives you the chimp, the llama, the giraffe… but not the elephant in the living room. It’s like a 127-minute trailer montage assembling every music-movie cliche you can think of: the producers’ astonishment in the recording studio, the tour bus, the billboard chart ascent, the meeting with the uncool corporate execs in their offices” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
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“Jaafar, the 29-year-old son of Jermaine Jackson, is Michael Jackson’s nephew, and he has never acted in a movie before. But does he ever nail the look, the voice, the electrostatic moves—and, more than that, the mixture of delicacy and steel that made Michael who he was” — Owen Gleiberman, Variety
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“Jaafar is Michael’s nephew, Jermaine’s son, and this is his acting debut. He is not really an actor, and I can’t imagine he’ll ever play a major role other than Michael Jackson. In dramatic scenes, he’s fully inert. He does Michael’s speaking voice all through the movie, and there was a mutter all through my theater when we first heard it. It’s not fun to hear someone talk like that for two hours. But Jaafar looks like Michael Jackson, and he moves like Michael Jackson — two things that are basically unthinkable. Fuqua uses Jaafar to restage countless iconic Jackson moments, and the moments of performance are absolutely electric. Parts of Michael are so good that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, just as parts of Michael are so bad that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.” —Tom Breihan, Stereogum
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“It gets a bit too bogged down in running through the greatest hits of a public life we already know well, right up to re-creation of those famous videos including a spot-on making of ‘Thriller.’ For all its attributes, Michael doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know and falls short of giving any new insights into what made him who he was.” — Pete Hammond, Deadline
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“This Michael is flat, barely human. Hagiography is the standard mode in which all estate-involved biographical movies work, documentary and fiction alike, the implication being that audiences can’t handle any hint that a figure might not be a saint, or at least a saintly victim. The notion that a human—someone who gets angry or bitter or has a bit of an ego on them—is inherently easier to relate to, far more believable and ultimately more lovable, seems lost on most filmmakers.” — Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times
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“The draw of Michael, Bohemian Rhapsody producer Graham King’s turn at the life of the King of Pop, isn’t the desire to understand Jackson as a person or as an artist, or to grapple with the weight of his legacy as one of the most pivotal cultural figures of the 20th century. It exists to be consumed as an act of allegiance, as proof of fandom. It resists story in favour of content, in making sure fans see what they expect to see, whether that be the ‘Thriller’ video or ‘Bad’ performed live at Wembley in 1988.” — Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent
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“It’s bad. It’s bad. It’s really, really bad.” — Nicholas Barber, BBC
