Michael: Film Review

Biopics (particularly those focused on musicians) often omit or compress aspects of their subjects stories, whether it be for creative, legal, or egotistical reasons. Michael does a hat trick by slicing and dicing parts of his story for all three. In fact, I’d say this film serves, mostly, as a vehicle for Lionsgate to put as many pre-Bad Michael Jackson songs on a soundtrack as they could. 

It feels like no one cared. At no point while watching this film did I feel any passion or earnestness behind any of the filmmaking decisions. It seems more concerned with making “the Michael Jackson movie” than making a good movie about Michael Jackson. There’s nothing inventive about the story, its structure, its developments - the scene in which he titles the Thriller album made me roll my eyes so hard, I swear I could see my cerebellum. No noteworthy technical elements, either. Antoine Fuqua’s directing skills seem to be lost behind the subdued glitz and glam. The only pieces of internal conflict Michael deals with in the film are his insecurity around his appearance and that he has no friends. The former I felt was dramatized well, but the latter is something everybody already knows. 

I’d believe that the white man that wrote this movie had a very easy time on this script. The people at Lionsgate probably told him, “write the most saccharine, pity-invoking story (about a man that doesn’t need one, mind you) you can,” and he probably said, “Show me the money.”

There was a tweet I saw the other day that puts my feelings into words more concisely than I ever could: “MICHAEL ending in 1988 with the release of BAD is like ending an O.J. biopic with him winning the Heisman” (@SeanMBurns). Even worse, its non-inclusion makes the entire film feel like damage control, a sloppy attempt at getting Michael back in people’s good graces. 

By stopping before the Bad era, you lose so much of what makes Jackson’s story as a celebrity interesting. Everybody understands his rise to fame, or if not, they at least understand what a rise to fame might look like. What everybody might not understand is the difficulty of keeping that image alive, which is what most of the 1990s and later was for Michael.

In a lot of ways, Michael feels like a remake of The Jacksons: An American Dream, even though it speeds through most of that time period in the first act, but that miniseries is much more effective than anything here, especially as it comes to his relationship with his family (because it’s concerned with them as real characters). 

In biopics, characters’ appearances are important, but they shouldn’t take priority. The main goal should be actors embodying their characters enough so that they feel like the real person. This wig-and-teeth ass movie, though, clearly only cares about people’s faces, at least as far as the supporting cast goes. 

I hate to say it… I really, truly do, but Michael is only about 3 shades away from a Tyler Perry production. The production quality, rote characterizations and dialogue, and bad wigs all contribute to it, but it’s also deeper than that. 

Tyler Perry makes movies for older Christian Black people that still talk to the “weird” uncle. The venn diagram of his fans and Michael Jackson fans almost looks like a circle, and thus, they won’t care if this film is good. Non-Americans, as well, likely won’t care at all. This film was made to preserve their image of him: the singing and dancing soft-spoken saint whose childhood was snatched away from him. If you’re looking for anything more substantial than that (or substantial at all), you should probably look somewhere else. 

I truly believe the only medium in which an artist’s life should be explored is documentary. Maybe instead of watching Michael, watch one of the multiple Spike Lee documentaries about him (2012’s Bad 25 or 2017’s Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall). You’ll learn so much more.

Viewed on 4/21/26 at press screening

Published on 4/22/26