from the series Movie Corner…

By HOWARD MCQUITTER II

2/5 Stars
2026
Biopic
Lionsgate

When I first saw the trailers for Michael in January and February I was elated to say the least to see director Antoine Fugal’s Michael. Every day on YouTube, television, and elsewhere, the public was inundated with the trailers on Michael Jackson. And why not? The late Michael Jackson, the top entertainer- dancer- singer on Earth, dazzled millions of fans across the globe. After all, wouldn’t this be the “perfect” biopic?

The film opens up in 1966 with the Jackson 5 and concludes with a big-time performance at Wembley Stadium in1988. Michael’s nephew Jafaar Jackson plays him. Michael and his siblings are growing up in Gary, Indiana, in a Black working class neighborhood under an authoritarian father. Joe Jackson is aptly performed by Colman Domingo and he drills his sons to be the best musicians in the music business, both R&B and Pop, with the help of Motown mogul, Berry Gordy. The children’s mother, Katherine Jackson, is raising her children in the Jehovah Witness sect. Outside of one scene when Katherine mentions “Jehovah” briefly to a young Michael, there’s nothing else that hints of a religious household.

The screenplay by John Logan (Alien: Covenant) is clumsy, vapid and tacky. Granted, it’s no easy task to make a good biopic, but what happens here is inexcusable. What Jaffar Jackson does with his uncle’s dance steps and singing on stage with such precision is as if he resurrected his uncle just for the movie. To say the story is flawed is an understatement. There are the scenes where Michael decides to get plastic surgery for his nose (to make it less “Negro-like”) and he tells people why his skin is two or three shades lighter. The lightning of skin or just being color struck about closer to white in skin tone has deep psychological issues among many Black people historically.

The fact that Michael’s other three siblings Janet, Randy and Rebbie are absent from the movie is just another reason to view the film in a negative manner. There were several legal battles behind the scenes with the Jackson estate which caused some production issues. Still, to leave main characters of the family out is not good at all, especially when it’s about somebody as great as Michael Jackson. The film ends with the all-out performance at Wembley Stadium in 1988. That of course is before he’s under accusations of pederasty (the first accusations became public in 1993). Fugal and Logan sanitize Michael to an embarrassing level. Last but not least, the question should be asked: with Fugal’s hackneyed Michael would the film have been in better hands of Ryan Coogler, Jordan Peele, Berry Jenkins, Ava Du Vernay, Spike Lee or Kasi Lemmons?

HOWARD MCQUITTER II is a longtime movie critic. He has been reviewing movies for the alley since 2002.

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