There weren’t beatings every night. No, not every.single.night. Still, I think we might have to acknowledge Joe Jackson (Colman Domingo) as villain of the year for 2026. This piece-of-crap, slave-driving, gold-digging, Great Santini father of … many (and at least one not shown) decided Gary, Indiana was too small for his dreams, his ego, and his beatin’ belt. And the smallest of the people shown in the film often took the brunt of it.
Michael is, of course, the biopic of Michael Jackson (Juliano Valdi as a kid, Jaafar Jackson as an “adult”), arguably the greatest artist of our generation. As a child, he fronted the Jackson 5, a boy band consisting entirely of he and his older brothers. And no matter how well they performed, dad -who the kids called “Joe,” was often driving harder with belt-laden incentives.
When the movie isn’t about Joe and his narcissistic iron-fisted dickery, it’s often about Michael, the boy who would be king. I’ll tell you who it wasn’t about. It wasn’t about his mother, his brothers, his sister LaToya, and if Janet Jackson made the film at all, that must have been on the cutting room floor. The latter is important because there’s a key moment when Michael declares independence from father/manager/tyrant Joe, and Joe -in turn- laments that without Michael, he’s got very little. I mean aside from the El Lay mansion, the valuables, the contacts, the endless royalties from the Jackson 5. But aside from that, he may as well be a pauper. Psst, nobody tell Antoine Fuqua that Janet Jackson was earning decent money for Joe the second she became a regular on “Good Times” in the mid-1970s.
The Jackson 5 was one of the great acts of the 1960s, and this worked for the family until Michael went solo with “Off the Wall” in 1978. Within that period, we learn a lot about the boy Michael was – shy and reclusive when not on stage, preferring animals to people, fantasizing about Peter Pan, and constantly dancing. One huge problem Michael had was dancing in recording studios. The film is entirely sympathetic to Michael’s POV: talented kid, father’s a monster. Period.
Isn’t Michael Jackson a little weird? Well, who hasn’t wanted a chimp for a pet? Not a pet, a “friend.” And who hasn’t walked their “friend” llama down Rodeo Drive? There’s a truly surreal moment in the film where “adult” Michael has successfully split from Joe and the latter freezes in his master bedroom, looking dumbfounded … while the pet giraffe just walks by the window.
Here’s something that I find fascinating – if there’s any lifelong lasting theme in the world of art it’s that it comes from within, and is shaped by experience and hardship and conditions that keep you in-tune to the world. Now keep that in mind when I tell you that Michael Jackson wrote “Thriller,” the top-selling album in the history of music, AFTER he owned a chimpanzee. Apparently, even if you’re out-of-touch, you can still channel greatness.
This leads me to the biggest complaint I have about Michael: it is horribly one-sided and incomplete. The film essentially ends after the 
Victory tour in 1984. Um, ok, but Michael lived 25 more years after that … and a lot of crazy shit went down in that time. He got married. Twice. He had children. He turned white. He made Neverland Ranch. There were allegations. There were accusations. Yes, he also produced more award-winning music; he assembled “We Are the World.” I won’t say this was “whitewashing history,” exactly, but the bio got a greater scrubbing than Michael’s skin. And it ended quite prematurely.
Oh wait. I get it. This is “Michael Begins,” right? Like Batman Begins. We’re going to see a sequel to this film that takes a much different tone, right? Well, just in case we’re not, I quite enjoyed many things about Michael. Yes, all the music was lip-synched. Can Michael’s nephew Jaafar actually sing? We may never know. But he can certainly dance. The re-creations of the “Beat It” and “Thriller” videos probably make the film worth seeing by themselves. And it is truly difficult not to like Michael’s music or his approach that it should “be for everybody.” So for an unsatisfying film with disgusting omissions, Michael was pretty good.
♪If they say, “Why? Why?”
Tell ‘em that it’s “Stranger Danger”
“Why? Why?”
He likes diddlin’ that way♫
Rated PG-13, 127 Minutes
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Writer: John Logan
Genre: Startin’ somethin’
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who only want to believe one side of Michael Jackson
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Realists
♪ Parody Inspired by “Human Nature”
