During the early 2000s, The Jacksons: An American Dream, a two-part miniseries about the Jackson family that dramatized the story behind their music, aired all over TV. It showed the exacting patriarch Joseph Jackson pushing his sons to rehearse for hours, eventually packaging them as an ensemble, the Jackson 5. Michael Jackson, the group’s main singer and one of his youngest sons, struggled under his father’s tyrannical rule. His path to freedom was a long one, hard fought after years of striking out with his own hit records. Based on the memoir of the Jackson family’s matriarch, Katherine, the series stops while Michael was at the peak of his 1980s popularity as the untarnished King Of Pop.
Part of me wishes I could enjoy Michael like I did watching The Jacksons: An American Dream as a kid who learned the moves to Thriller from Pop-Up Video reruns. Throughout Michael, director Antoine Fuqua shows the effect the superstar had on his fans, recreating the excitement of various shows throughout his early career: the hordes of fans rushing the stage for a glimpse of the performer; girls crying, a few even passing out in the frenzy; and almost everyone dancing and scream-singing their favorite songs. It was a reminder of what once was—the joy of loving an artist and their work without any caveats. But over the years, that image has soured. Some have seen, read, and heard too much to unquestionably accept the whitewashed series of events. Michael is an attempt to remind audiences why so many fans fell in love with him in the first place, but it doubles as a pretty clear bit of hagiography.
Like The Jacksons: An American Dream, Fuqua’s Michael focuses on the family’s journey from Gary, Indiana to Michael Jackson’s ascension to the pop throne in the 1980s. Instead of focusing on the family reuniting onstage in the aftermath of the disastrous Pepsi commercial that severely burned the singer, Michael bookends its story with his first solo tour to promote Bad in 1988, when he finally stepped out of his father’s shadow. A scenery-chewing Colman Domingo brings Joseph to life as the film’s imposing villain, a tough father and single-minded manager who beats Michael from a young age. Katherine (Nia Long) stays quiet during her children’s abuse for years, before taking a stand against Joseph for the sake of her son. Juliano Valdi gives childhood Michael a precocious energy in his performance, constantly moving to the beat even if it accidentally affects the recording. Later, Michael’s real-life nephew and Jermaine Jackson’s son, Jaafar Jackson, slips into the single sequined glove, imitating his uncle’s voice, mannerisms, and dance moves with an almost eerie precision and what looks like countless hours of practice.
With a much larger budget than the Jackson family TV movie, Fuqua’s biopic carefully plays up the grandiosity of this larger-than-life story as if to remind the audience of Michael Jackson’s popularity at the time. There are swarms of fans waiting for him at every turn, and in one funny sequence, several mailmen stop by the Jackson residence with a growing number of fan mail. In studio scenes, Michael’s vocal tracks sometimes play with little or no musical accompaniment, showing off his singing skills in a way few would have ever listened to before. The Jackson family compound comes complete with a snake, a llama, a giraffe grazing on the leaves outside a window, and of course, Bubbles the chimp, who gets a surprising amount of screentime as one of Michael’s few friends. The film doesn’t do much in the way of analyzing Michael, but it explores the strange, isolated world he built for himself—the beginnings of his own Neverland. Although Michael wanted his “Thriller” director John Landis to shoot his entire body when dancing so the camera captures the choreography, Fuqua prefers a closer set-up, sometimes with too much editing to inject extra movement; in sequences like the Motown 25th anniversary special, it derails the suspense of the debut of the moonwalk.
This moment is just one in which Michael functions like a greatest hits compilation. Roughly a third of the movie is a musical performance, as the cast reenacts everything from momentous concerts to music video rehearsals. This is where Fuqua and cinematographer Dion Beebe shine brightest, bottling the energy of a Michael Jackson concert in all its glory through bright stage lights, shiny costumes, and ceaseless cutting between the crowd of enthusiastic fans and Michael thrilling them. While so much effort went into recreating these beloved pop culture moments, the dramatic scenes between performances and creative choices behind them don’t feel as polished. Some scenes look and sound badly written, like when Michael Jackson brings members of the Crips and Bloods to create the “Beat It” music video, they end up mostly sidelined except to cheer him on. At times, Jackson is alone in his creative genius, making him seem like the only talent in a room full of musicians making an album. However, John Logan’s script gives Michael plenty of substitute father figures to lean on in the absence of his own for emotional support, including Berry Gordy (Larenz Tate), his driver Bill Bray (KeiLyn Durrel Jones), Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson), and John Branca (Miles Teller), the manager who tries to fire Joseph over the fax machine.
There are scenes that can only be described as whitewashing, sainting Michael Jackson in such a way that it feels explicitly like calculated damage control. Michael never loses his temper or shows any flaws beyond not standing up to his dad and never growing up. He’s portrayed as an innocent good guy who prefers the company of animals to people, brings toys to kids in hospitals, sits to talk with them, and sings to a girl in a wheelchair when he’s a child because, as he says, “They’re not my fans; they’re my family.” There are at least three scenes in a hospital showing Michael bringing joy to sick kids, which feels oddly excessive for a man with a very busy career. There’s a reason the film stops in 1988, and it’s not just because it’s his first solo tour. It’s because after that, it gets hard, and legally complicated, to just enjoy the music. It’s easier to accept the version of Michael who’s just a little too obsessed with Peter Pan when not confronted with what comes next.
Like the long-running Broadway show, MJ: The Musical, the team behind Michael are counting on audiences just looking to enjoy the nostalgic rush of hearing songs like “ABC,” “Gotta Be Startin’ Somethin’,” and “Billie Jean.” While this movie may have his uncle’s name on it (and his estate’s approval), Michael belongs to Jaafar Jackson and his ability to conjure the thrill of watching Michael Jackson perform his signature moves in retro costumes. There’s almost an element of comfort in its predictability, even as it skirts as much controversy as possible, finally throwing up a card that reads “His Story Continues,” when it’s time to bail. Only, the audience knows what’s next—and if you don’t, that’s what search engines are for—and not everyone is willing to separate the art from the artist.
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Writer: John Logan
Starring: Jaafar Jackson, Colman Domingo, Juliano Valdi, Nia Long, Miles Teller
Release Date: April 24, 2026
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