Michael: It's Bad, It's Bad, It's Really, Really Bad (dubuview)

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:02]How did it go? Z the tour locks are gone and the treaty is signed. Good work.

[00:00:07]Biopics are easily one of my least favorite genres right now and I've made that pretty clear before. For me one of the most significant tells of whether a biopic is going to be good is how involved the subject's family is in the production. When they're heavily involved it causes pressure within the production team. You have to teeter between telling the truth and satisfying the requests and it often feels like these two goals are mutually exclusive.

[00:00:31]Perfect example of this is when Sacha Baron Cohen's gritty Arved a Tella on Freddy Mercury was rejected because Queen wanted a PG rated film focusing on the band's legacy. With the biopic Michael centered around the larger than life icon Michael Jackson, I was hoping for something more akin to Oppenheimer than Bohemian Rhapsody and unfortunately it's on the shitty side. Let's start with what I liked though. Two core performances [music] by Jaafar Jackson and Colman Domingo really felt like the standouts of the film. For first time performance Jackson definitely left quite an impression on me albeit a flawed one. Physically this was insanely impressive. As someone who can't dance for [ __ ] I got to say it looked really good. His overall flow and rhythm was genuine [music] and the two to three years he spent training and preparing was well worth it. His voice, his pitch, his tone are all perfect and sound exactly like his uncle's but it's everything else that leaves me conflicted. His display of emotions felt pretty one note for such a complex and conflicted person. Rarely [music] does he ever have an expression other than happiness. There were a couple of scenes where he could have really showed his acting skills but he never showed them.

[00:01:38]It showed his lack of experience but either way I believe he can and will improve with future projects. Whether he wants to continue with acting is up to him but he definitely has a future in this industry whether it be as an actor or as a composer like he originally wanted to. But if I'm being completely honest for a film called Michael I was most interested in Joseph Jackson and that's thanks to Colman Domingo's performance. First things first the prosthetics work is spot on. It's perfect. I generally couldn't believe that it was Colman Domingo when I first saw the first screen capture of him in the film. He really has such a striking presence in every scene he's in. He was aside from Jaafar's performance my favorite part of the film. I really liked the cinematography too. It's well lit and looks nice but that's all I really liked about the film. The editing is not good. It feels choppy and I think about 20 minutes could be cut down. So much of this film consists of montages.

[00:02:34]Whenever you hear an iconic song boom montage. This repetition got really tiring to watch and they're really only saved by the amazing music. Even then the repeated use of his songs took me out of so many dramatic moments and it left me totally confused. The writing absolutely sucks. There's a simple rule many of us learned at elementary school about writing. Show don't tell. It means don't explicitly say things but show it through imagery and symbolism. In this film everyone says what they're feeling because how could the audience possibly know what the characters are feeling without them telling us. So much of the dialogue is Michael saying I want to do my own thing or Joseph Jackson saying I'm bringing the boys back together for a tour [music] or an executive saying you're special Michael. This incessant need to bluntly explain what's happening [music] and how characters are feeling is an unfortunate commonality in modern filmmaking and it's awful seeing it play out to this degree. Despite how much I enjoyed the [music] performances they couldn't salvage this terrible script.

[00:03:36]You can so easily convey all of these through the cinematography. [music] There's no need to explain it through words. Cinema is a visual medium.

[00:03:44][music] Use that to your advantage.

[00:03:46]Structure. This matters so much for film especially for a biopic of this scale.

[00:03:51]Much like a complete unknown Michael is essentially a Wikipedia page summary of Michael Jackson's life from the Jackson 5 all the way till 1988. Almost all the major events are covered here. Motown, his separation from the Jackson 5 and the Pepsi incident are all here but not everything is and this is my biggest criticism of the film. For such a conflicted, complex and traumatic life it's portrayed as anything but that.

[00:04:17]Michael Jackson was not a perfect person nor was he close to being one. To present him as a spotless icon who only struggled with the abuse from his father and a lack of creative freedom is disingenuous and incredibly disrespectful to the audience. [music] Between the Jackson 5 and 1988 he went through several cosmetic procedures had a bizarre obsession with his health and served as a Jehovah's Witness. Even if this isn't relevant to his music career it's relevant to him. While I still very much dislike A Complete Unknown at least it tried to humanize Bob Dylan. Here I feel even more disconnected to Michael Jackson as a person. The events of the film are played out simply as facts rather than an extension of Michael and who he was as a human being. I understand it's a biopic about his music career but it doesn't show us anything we didn't already know. Why not show us something we don't? He was an amazing performer and artist but also a paranoid, anxious human being who felt pressured by his own public image. So much of his life was spent being observed under a precise microscope. He didn't have a childhood. He didn't feel comfortable in his own skin and he was so disconnected from the world around him because of his immense fame. So many news media raised rumors against him.

[00:05:33]Many he vehemently denied. He's been accused of sexual abuse against children multiple times. There's so much here you can use to really flesh out who Michael Jackson was behind the camera and you don't do that. I understand this film went through some heavy rewrites with early drafts covering the child abuse accusations but that doesn't excuse these glaring issues. Never did I feel the isolation he went through. Never did I feel the turmoil he felt from the media. Never did I feel like I really knew him. I can only pray that Michael acts as the rise of Michael Jackson and the foreshadowed sequel acts as the fall. Quite frankly I'm sick and tired of seeing these biopics depicting celebrities as something they're not. It shows me that they see them as images and not what they really are.

[00:06:20]People.

[00:06:22]Pudding boy.

[00:06:23]>> [laughter]