Michael Movie Review: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆ (3/5)
“Michael” earns 3 out of 5 stars for its stunning musical sequences and Jaafar Jackson’s impressive performance. The film shines as a visual and emotional tribute, but falls short due to its surface-level storytelling and lack of deeper exploration.
There’s a version of the Michael Jackson biopic that could have been one of the great music films ever made. The life, the talent, the contradictions, the tragedy, the genius — it’s all there, waiting to be explored honestly and with real courage.
What Antoine Fuqua has made instead is something considerably safer. It’s glossy, it’s frequently thrilling, it’s anchored by a performance that genuinely surprises you — and it’s also, ultimately, a film that decides admiration is enough and never pushes further than that.
Whether that frustrates you or not probably depends on what you came in wanting.
Jaafar Jackson — This Is the Real Story
Let’s start here because it’s the most important thing to say about this film: Jaafar Jackson is extraordinary.
The obvious concern going in was that casting Michael Jackson’s nephew would produce something reverential and stiff — a family-approved impersonation rather than an actual performance. What actually happens is something more interesting. Jaafar doesn’t just replicate his uncle’s movements and mannerisms, though he does those with uncanny accuracy. He inhabits the character emotionally, finding the vulnerability and the hunger and the fear underneath the performance.
The dance sequences are incredible — technically precise in a way that would be impressive from any trained performer, let alone someone making their feature film debut at this scale. But it’s the quieter moments that are actually more revealing. A scene with his father. A moment alone before a major show. The weight of expectation sitting on a young man’s shoulders who can feel it but doesn’t yet have the language to describe it.
This is a career-making performance, full stop. Whatever the film around him does or doesn’t do, Jaafar Jackson has announced himself in a way that will be hard to ignore.
When the Music Plays, Everything Works
The concert and performance sequences in this film are genuinely something. “Billie Jean,” “Thriller,” several others — recreated with a level of detail and energy that makes you understand, viscerally, why this person became who he became.
The choreography is spectacular. The production design rebuilds specific eras of Jackson’s career with obvious care. The sound design makes the musical numbers feel immersive in a way that proper cinema sound can deliver when it’s done right.
These sequences are the film at its best — alive, electric, and completely convincing. If you close your eyes and listen, you’re taken somewhere. If you watch with your eyes open, you’re watching one of the most technically accomplished musical recreations in recent cinema history.
The problem is that between these sequences, the film has to be something else. And that’s where things get more complicated.
A Biopic That Prefers the Highlight Reel
The structure of Michael is essentially a greatest hits package with dramatic scenes in between. Major milestone, performance sequence, brief personal moment, next major milestone. Repeat.
This keeps things moving — the film never drags, never loses its energy entirely — but it also prevents any single thread from developing the emotional weight it needs. The story of Michael’s relationship with his father, Joseph Jackson, is genuinely compelling and Coleman Domingo plays it with real intensity. But it keeps getting interrupted by the next chapter, the next achievement, the next moment of triumph.
What you end up with feels less like a life examined and more like a life celebrated. Which is fine, as far as it goes — but it’s not really what a biography is supposed to do.
The Things the Film Chooses Not to Say
This is where honest reviewing of Michael gets complicated, so let’s address it directly.
The controversies surrounding Michael Jackson’s life — the accusations, the trials, the long and genuinely unresolved questions about who he was behind the performances — are largely absent from this film. What’s there is softened, presented briefly, and quickly moved past in favour of returning to the music and the magic.
This is clearly a deliberate creative choice, and the filmmakers have the right to make it. But it means the film presents a version of Michael Jackson that’s incomplete in ways the audience is aware of even if the film pretends otherwise.
A biopic that chooses not to engage with the hardest parts of its subject’s life can still be a good film. But it can’t be a great biography. And for viewers who wanted the full picture — the complicated, difficult, genuinely uncertain full picture — Michael offers something that consistently stops short of where it should go.
The Technical Side Is Impressive Throughout
Whatever else you say about the film, nobody cut corners on the production. The recreation of different periods of Jackson’s career — the Jackson 5 era, the Thriller years, the later years — is handled with care and genuine attention to period detail.
Cinematography, costume design, set design — all of it is working at a high level. The film is gorgeous to look at, and in the musical sequences especially, the visual storytelling is as impressive as the performance elements.
The writing is where the gap opens up. The dialogue leans on biopic conventions — lines that explain feelings rather than revealing them, transitions that tell you where you are in the story rather than letting you feel it. It’s competent but rarely surprising.
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Who This Film Is For
If you love Michael Jackson’s music and you want two hours that celebrate what made him extraordinary — the dancing, the performing, the sheer scale of his impact on popular culture — this film will give you that. Generously and with real craft.
If you’re a fan who specifically wanted an honest accounting of the whole life, including the parts that are hard and unresolved and don’t fit neatly into a tribute — this film will leave you unsatisfied.
And if you’re watching primarily as a cinema experience, drawn by the Jaafar Jackson performance and the spectacle of it — you’ll find those things absolutely delivered, even as the story around them falls short of what it could have been.
A Final Note That Leaves You Reflecting
Michael is a film that dazzles when it trusts its performances and its music, and plays it safe when it has to reckon with anything more complicated. Jaafar Jackson deserves every piece of praise coming his way — he does something genuinely difficult and does it brilliantly.
The film itself is a tribute. Warm, technically impressive, and emotionally engaging in its best moments. But as a biography of one of the most complex figures in modern cultural history, it keeps the door firmly closed on the rooms that matter most.
Walking out, you’ll feel the music. You won’t necessarily feel like you know the man any better than when you walked in.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆ (3/5)