King of Pop, Michael Jackson has huge fan following and when a biopic was announced on the legendary singer cum dancer, viewers and his fans across the world got super excited. The film titled Michael starred Michael Jackon's nephew Jaafar Jackson in the lead role and is directed by Antoine Fuqua.
Michael story revolves around the legendary King of Pop Michael Jackson and is struggles while attaining the stardom and the journey later and the challenges he faced in maintaining the stardom till his last breath.
Young Michael (Juliano Krue Valdi) is trained rigorously by his strict dad Joseph Jackson (Colman Domingo) in dance at his house after his work hours in a steel factory. However there is dark side in it which Michael suffers silently.
He grows up and along with his brothers form his own band Jackson 5 and from then on there is no stopping to his journey to stardom, name and fame. Where this leads to and how Michael Jackson (Jaafar Jackson) dealt with it, what roles his family members, colleagues, friends play form the rest of the narration.
Jaafar Jackson performed the role of the icon to perfection. He put in lot of hardwork and he elevated the scenes with his performance and he showed good expressions and emotions.
Colman Domingo made his presence felt with his perforamnce in the role of Joseph Jackson. He performed well in the role of a subdued antagonist. Others like Nia Long, Juliano Valdi, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, Laura Harrier,Miles Teller performed according to their roles.
Michael story is helmed by Antoine Fuqua. He starts the narration showing the childhood of Jackson and his struggles before showing his rise to stardom. Just like in all other biopics, this biopic also shows only the positive happenings in the life of Jackson. The makers conveniently stayed away from the numerous controversies that happened.
This resulted in the viewers just watching the proceedings as the actors passed through the motions on the big screen. The cast and crew gave in everything but with negatives conveniently hid under the carpet, general public got deprieved of knowing the inside happenings in the life of Michael Jackson. The story turns out to be predictable and screenplay decent and the direction is ok.
Dion Beebe's cinematography is of top notch. He took viewers to the journey of Michael Jackson's hit songs with his camera angles. Lior Rosner with his music added value to the narration and gave the viewers the nostalgic feeling.
Conrad Buff IV, Tom Cross, John Ottman, Harry Yoon's editing could have been better as at times the narration slowed the pace. Art director did a commendable job in recreating the dance floors, stages showcasing the performances of Michael Jackson giving it an authentic feel.
Altogether, Michael turns out to be half baked biopic and a weak tribute to the legend. The cast and crew did a commendable job but the makers decision as to not to touch the negative happenings in the life of the King of Pop and also the abrupt ending of the film with the happenings of the 1988 though he came up with chartbuster albums later, disappoints all completely. This gturned the entire narrative bland and insipid. A little finetuning of the story and the script, racy screenplay would have added value to the narration and turned out to be a fitting tribute. Considering all these aspects, Cinejosh goes with 2 rating for Michael.