Joseph Jackson (Colman Domingo), a steel worker in Gary, Indiana had dreams of grander and to achieve those dreams, he platformed his five sons as a pop act, The Jackson 5, with youngest son Michael (Juliano Valdi) as the lead vocalist. They sign a deal with Motown in 1969, move to California, and with national spotlight on the quintet, it is only a matter of time before Epic Records offers Michael (now, Jaafar Jackson), a solo album. His fame and popularity only grows, and after the release of his second album with even more incredible hit singles, Joseph is determined to get the Jackson 5 back together for a global tour, but Michael has other plans.

Antoine Fuqua directs Michael, an estate-backed biopic of Michael Jackson written by John Logan for Lionsgate. The 130 minute film chronicles twenty-two years from the early Jackson 5 hits to the Bad tour of 1988 at Wembley Stadium. After a fraught production starting in late 2019 and delayed by the 2023 joint guild strikes, the third act had to get revised after a clause in a 1993 legal settlement barred any references to the abuse allegation from being made in film. Eschewing a buzzy festival debut, the film opened wide in late April on just shy of 4,000, screens including a strong PLF engagement.

As a note for clarity, Michael will be used to refer to the “character” of Michael Jackson in the film, Jackson to Jaafar, and Michael Jackson to the figure in real life.

Not quite cradle to grave, the film nonetheless starts off following the standard biopic template spending about 25 minutes with the Jackson 5 and plenty of the music they wrote on their rise to fame. For those who enjoy the nostalgia hit from seeing these songs performed on the big screen with loudspeakers, it is the logical entryway into this story, but it is just a real slog despite the charm brought to the screen by Valdi as Logan works through the beats of setting up Michael’s troubled childhood.

Domingo becomes something of a sneaky scene stealer across the film’s runtime, working for Michael’s success in so far as it fuels his own. Across the decades of the film, costume director Marci Rodgers along with Domingo’s makeup artist, Jamie Richmond, they continually transform the brooding father at times looking like a fairy tale monster, though one decked out in bold, sharkskin suits and heavily accessorized. He looms large in the frame, especially in the latter half of the film where the blocking regulates him to the back in favor of the Jackson family matriarch, Katherine (Nia Long), producer Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson), or Michael’s manager John Branca (Miles Teller). Also in the background of many of these ensemble scenes, though lit in a much more benevolent light, Bill Bray (KeiLyn Durrel Jones), Michael’s private security detail who was hired by Joe when Michael was still a boy. While Domingo steals the scene with bombast, very much his foil, Jones steals the scene with solemnity. There is a peripheral telling of this story through Bill’s eyes that would be much more bold, challenging, and intriguing to watch as he stands on the periphery almost with the ethics of a nature photographer, unable to interfere despite a pure love and admiration for their subject. Fuqua seems to sense this as well as he allows the camera to linger just a little longer than is necessary, but it is nevertheless appreciated by audiences looking for that extra bit of depth behind an otherwise bubblegum feature.

While the wider ensemble all bring some flavor to the film, it is undeniably Jackson’s film to lead. The young actor is radiant in his first film role, and again, with help from Rogers and the extensive hair and makeup team, there are flashes of him on screen, more so in the candid moments, that the resemblance is nothing short of uncanny. In real life the nephew of Michael Jackson, the reverence shows on screen towards his uncle is palpable, and while the nature of the project it to place a sheet of tracing paper over the King of Pop’s legacy, it holds Jackson back from really stretching in the role and showing off his skills as a performer. This is a film that hinges on his performance, but it is not his vehicle; Michael Jackson is still at the wheel, but frustratingly so, Fuqua and Logan do not fully deliver on that promise despite having full access to the music.

With a focus on his meteoric rise, Michael touches on some of those early hits – “Beat It,” “Thriller,” and “Billie Jean” – yet it treats them almost as stepping stones to something greater. Without going through the numbers, the Jackson 5 first act feels like it contains a more through account of the discography and hits and allows those songs to play out in longer and uncut montages than some of the larger solo hits. Needless to say, this is a frustrating approach to take, especially when “Thriller” alone could be a movie in and of itself. We seemingly spend more time working through the Pepsi ad that leaves Michael in the burn unit than we do on “Thriller.” While thankfully Fuqua does not allow for Dion Beebe’s lens to meandering pan across the gob smacked faces of onlookers as James Mangold s egregiously did in A Complete Unknown (2024) – Michael mostly composes in private – audiences are still left confused at the lack of music throughout much of the middle act and the rather limp lineup in the farewell tour that crowns the third act.

Michael is a film that is ultimately trying to do much while carefully sidestepping any major controversy through a too-manicured and too-curated image of its title character. Estate-backed, this is no surprise, and it saves all of its thorniness for Joe who falls on his sword for the sake of Michael’s story, here, but the film still brushes up against details that will either foreshadow a darker future for those coming to the film with any backing knowledge of that later years of Michael Jackson’s life, or seemingly lead to nowhere for those unfamiliar with the plagued artist’s trials. It is seeking to explain a set of events that it is unwilling to or legally unable to engage with, so these little clues or insights seeking to explain how Michael Jackson was perceived by the public feel totally out of place. Compounding these loose ends, the overly segmented editing makes it hard for the scenes to build off of each other and most of the progression is achieved through intertitles declaring the change of year or location. It is a film that barely scratches the itch for fans who will mostly be left checking their watch for when they can pull up Spotify and blast the songs in full on their way home, and for the uninitiated, it is rather uninspiring. To call it a blatant cash grab seem ingenuous, but it is hard to discern the reason behind making this film, especially today, and to be brazen enough to tease a sequel letting the legacy speak for itself and sending it off on a high note.