3 min to read
Michael
Michael Jackson had a pet monkey?
Review: I had seen some very conflicting reviews of the movie prior to watching this, so I was extremely curious on how good (or bad) the movie actually was. To my great surprise, the movie was actually very good. I think many of the reviewers online were mad that the movie didn’t go over certain controversies of MJ’s life, mostly the controversies in his later life, but the movie focuses on his first 25-30 years of life.
While the movie is 100% about MJ’s rise to fame after the Jackson 5, the story is also centered around MJ and his relationship with his father. To me, despite having a very well written movie about MJ’s rise to stardom, I thoroughly enjoyed how they were able to show how unique and how contentious their relationship was, with their relationship really making MJ feel like a normal person rather than just a superstar.
It starts by showing the Jackson boys, living in Ohio at the time, practicing their songs in their house, with their dad pushing them as hard as possible to have the kids work as hard as possible to be somebody and become somebody. Over the course of the film you see the family’s success, but along the journey you see how abusive their father was, especially towards Michael. He was a perfectionist and a control freak, and if something wasn’t right or if someone didn’t do as he said he would beat some sense into them. Since Michael was the youngest boy he ended up getting the brunt of the abuse, and you see how this affected him as he grew up. He was extremely close with his mom, and he intentionally tried to avoid his father as much as possible so he wouldn’t have to deal with any potential repercussions of his actions.
From this point on you start seeing Michael start focusing on his own music, writing, singing, and performing, and it is the iconic MJ performances that they bring to life that make this movie so good. They have so much archival footage from so many of his iconic performances, and they recreate them, with Jaafar Jackson (plays Michael) perfectly reenacting every dance move and all of MJ’s mannerisms. It was due to these scenes I thought it was a brilliant idea to have MJ’s nephew play him in the movie. Because they already looked similar enough, Jaafar was able to literally transform into the MJ we all remember.
While I really did have a great time watching the movie, there were 2 major things that slightly bothered me, the first being the editing of the movie. Most of the movie was completely fine, having normal-length takes and not being hyper edited, but once it came down to the iconic performances, it felt like they were cutting every 3 seconds or so. Instead of making it feel like you were watching the performance (from the audience’s perspective) the whole time, they had the camera and the edits take you all over the place, and it was because of the cuts and edits that at times I was taken out of the performance because I actually couldn’t fully enjoy it (or see it). My second gripe with the movie is with the lip syncing. I know they weren’t going to use Jaafar’s voice instead of MJ’s, but I’m nearly certain that because of how much editing and cutting they were doing during the concert performance scenes, the lip syncing just felt off. I don’t know how to describe it well enough, but something just felt off (off enough that I noticed it).
Overall, you should go see this movie. It does a great job at showing you who MJ was in his early years and gives you great insight about what made him who he was. I’d really suggest watching this in theaters, as watching the major performances in the theater was just awesome.
P.S. I had no idea that MJ had a pet monkey named Bubbles before watching this movie.
Rating: 4/5 (really close to 4.5)
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