The movie Michael is a perfect example of why critic reviews mean absolutely nothing. Sure, they are fun to look at every once in a while, but in reality they have little to no input on how good a movie actually is. In this instance, when the biopic first came out, the critic reviews were atrocious. One review from RogerEbert.com was titled, “The Michael Jackson biopic is bad, you know it”. Well, the Michael movie wasn’t just not bad, it was actually great.
As you can see above, Michael has one of the best soundtracks in any musical biopic ever. And it really shouldn’t come as a surprise, speaking as he is the greatest artist of all time. Every single song gets the audience swooning, wanting to hear more.
As of right now, Michael has grossed over $850 million worldwide, and may have a chance to reach that billion dollar mark. It needs another $100 million or so to pass Oppenheimer as the highest grossing biopic of all time.
This film is the ultimate feel-good movie. It doesn’t dive into any of the bad side of Michael’s life, such as the legal trouble or SA allegations. And we as the audience dont wan’t to see that stuff. Antoine Fuqua knows exactly what we came here for, and he delivered it to us on a silver platter.
I am just at a loss of words on how this could be viewed as a “bad” (no pun intended) movie from critics. Is it the greatest film making of all time? Absolutely not. But can anyone that has a soul hate on this movie? Also absolutely not. From the moment it begins, it gives us the hits, which is what we as the audience all are begging for.
Jaafar Jackson. Ultimately the nepotism in this world that we want. Jaafar, Michael’s nephew, was selected to play the main role of Michael Jackson. This was his FIRST acting role ever!! It’s crazy what he got put up to do for his first role. And while he wasn’t exactly great or even good at the acting portion, he could sing and dance almost as well as MJ could, which is all he needed to be able to do.
Sure, there are problems with the film. Janet Jackson isn’t mentioned at all throughout the movie. It doesn’t want to do anything rather than just sing and dance. And that’s where the critics are coming from. They see the filmmaking problems throughout. But what they fail to realise is that we just don’t care. We get to see Michael Jackson back on the big screen. And in reality, that is all that matters.
So why do I say that this is how to do a musical biopic correctly? Because, when watching these, you don’t want to have to think. You don’t want to have to dig deep into your brain. You just want to sit back, relax, and listen to some really good freaking music. Which is precisely what we got here.
