MJ Biopic Is Bad, Bad, Really, Really Bad

Michael Jackson's rise—and only his rise—are on display in Antoine Fuqua's Michael, a new film sanctioned by the singer's estate and starring his nephew, Jaafar Jackson. It may have you dancing and singing along, but critics aren't moved, giving it a 33% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The main problem: what's missing.

• "It can feel downright giddy to once again bask in Jackson's former glory," but this is "as much a fairy tale as Peter Pan's Neverland," focused on the highs while ignoring the lows, without even a subtle nod to the allegations of child sex abuse Jackson faced, writes Jake Coyle at the AP, noting scenes to that effect "were cut due to stipulations in an earlier settlement." He gives the film 1.5 stars out of 4.
• "It's like a 127-minute trailer montage assembling every music-movie cliche you can think of," from a brutal stage dad to rapid chart climbs and massive concerts, with no attention to the "elephant in the living room," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. Jackson is rendered as a sanitized, almost static figure. And when the credits roll, with a message that "the story continues," it's 1988 and Jackson is only 30.

• Jaafar and 12-year-old Juliano Krue Valdi (young Michael) make you believe you're watching the real person. But the film's "borderline-fatal" flaw is its failure to address, "even obliquely, the accusations, controversies and sadness" of Jackson, writes the Telegraph's Robbie Collin, awarding 2 stars out of 5. There's a chance for redemption, however, since a sequel examining the later trouble could "retrospectively redeem the entire project."
• Accuracy goes out the window in "the Passion of St. Michael," writes David Fear at Rolling Stone, who sees much twisting of the narrative. "We were never going to get a real biopic of Michael Jackson," he acknowledges. "That doesn't mean, however, we were destined to get a movie where Michael plays a game of Twister" with a computer-generated Bubbles the chimp. Jackson's greatest hits, "reproduced with such stunning accuracy," are tough to take in because "the level of innocence required to listen to those hits is long gone."