{"id":2382833,"date":"2026-04-21T13:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T13:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2382833"},"modified":"2026-04-21T13:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T13:20:11","slug":"movie-review-in-michael-the-king-of-pop-is-resurrected-sans-complications-winnipeg-free-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/movie-review-in-michael-the-king-of-pop-is-resurrected-sans-complications-winnipeg-free-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review: In \u2018Michael,\u2019 the King of Pop is resurrected, sans complications \u2013 Winnipeg Free Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cMichael\u201d slides a sequin glove over the pop star\u2019s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson\u2019s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great.<\/p>\n

Antoine Fuqua\u2019s movie is sanctioned by Jackson\u2019s estate and its producers include Jackson\u2019s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson\u2019s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael\u201d doesn\u2019t even subtly nod to these facts. It moonwalks right past them. The result is a kind of fantasy film, one that relives the extraordinary highs of Michael Jackson while turning a blind eye to the lows.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jaafar
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJaafar Jackson arrives at the premiere of “Michael” on Monday, April 20, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss\/Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something understandably hard to resist about that. Who wouldn\u2019t love to forget all the bad that comes with Michael Jackson? \u201cBillie Jean,\u201d alone, is good enough to give you amnesia. We\u2019re talking about one of the greatest song-and-dance entertainers of the 20th century. The connection he forged with millions shouldn\u2019t be taken for granted. And it can feel downright giddy to once again bask in Jackson\u2019s former glory \u2014 or, at least, an uncanny approximation of it by Jaafar Jackson, his nephew. But that also makes \u201cMichael\u201d as much a fairy tale as Peter Pan\u2019s Neverland.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael\u201d originally included scenes dealing the sexual abuse allegations, but those were cut due to a stipulations in an earlier settlement. The finished film, scripted by John Logan (\u201cGladiator,\u201d \u201cAviator\u201d), is largely structured as a father-son drama. In the film\u2019s early Gary, Indiana-set scenes, Joe Jackson (a typically compelling Colman Domingo) forcefully drills his children into becoming the Jackson 5 and whips young Michael (an excellent Juliano Krue Valdi) with his belt.<\/p>\n

While \u201cMichael\u201d spans the Jackson 5 and \u201cOff the Wall\u201d and \u201cThriller,\u201d its through-line is Michael\u2019s struggle for emancipation from his overbearing father and manager. In that way, it\u2019s quite similar to 2022\u2019s \u201cElvis,\u201d which likewise turned on the dynamic between Presley and the controlling Colonel Tom Harper.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the broad-strokes, play-the-hits biopic approach is very much at work in \u201cMichael,\u201d produced by Graham King (\u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d). Fuqua, best known for muscular thrillers like \u201cTraining Day\u201d and \u201cThe Equalizer,\u201d is maybe an unlikely pick for the task. But he cleverly stages some scenes, like when young Michael first lays down a track in a recording studio. While his father looms outside and producers tell Michael not to shuffle his feet so much, Fuqua moves inside the booth. We hear nothing but Michael\u2019s voice. The noise stops and there\u2019s just his pure, not-yet-corrupted vocal power, singing \u201cWho\u2019s Lovin\u2019 You.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened to Jackson as he became an adult, many would consider both an astonishing success story and an American tragedy. \u201cMichael\u201d doesn\u2019t try for that balance. It mainly follows the emergence of an icon, albeit a peculiar one who takes shelter in a room full of children\u2019s toys and whose need to be \u201cperfect\u201d drives him to cosmetic surgery in his early 20s. These and other developments (like the arrival of Bubbles the chimp) are mostly met with eye rolls by family members: the idiosyncrasies of a man-child genius.<\/p>\n

At nearly every turn, you can feel the narrative being twisted, sometimes by those still alive. (Joe Jackson died in 2018, nine years after his son\u2019s death at 50.) Katherine Jackson (Nia Long), Michael\u2019s mother, is downright saintly. John Branca (Miles Teller), co-executor of Jackson\u2019s estate and a producer of the film, is seen as a heroic ally to Michael.<\/p>\n

Branca, perhaps, deserves the victory lap. Such a big-screen revival for Jackson was once unthinkable. But \u201cMichael\u201d is the latest in a string of successes for the former King of Pop, including Cirque du Soleil shows and \u201cMJ the Musical\u201d on Broadway \u2014 all despite the evidence presented by the 2019 documentary \u201cLeaving Neverland.\u201d \u201cMichael\u201d isn\u2019t really a rebuttal to that film. It\u2019s pure pop shock-and-awe. And turning up the volume on \u201cBeat It\u201d will win you some arguments.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"This
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThis image released by Lionsgate shows Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in a scene from “Michael.” (Glen Wilson\/Lionsgate via AP)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s on screen is constantly running, in our minds, alongside what isn\u2019t. Even the glossiest of biopics allow some negative characteristics to show, but Fuqua\u2019s film sticks almost entirely to Michael, the myth. He visits kids in hospitals, makes Black history on MTV, writes the \u201cThriller\u201d album in near solitary. (Kendrick Sampson plays a seldom seen Quincy Jones.)<\/p>\n

As played by Jaafar Jackson, Michael is a wide-innocent who bore the scars of abuse and yet nevertheless maintained a childlike belief in music: king and casualty of pop, at once. If there\u2019s one thing that needs no embellishment here, it\u2019s the fervor of audiences for Jackson at his astonishing peak. Fuqua lingers on the fans losing their minds for Michael, but that ardor was real. Jaafar Jackson\u2019s performance is a remarkable, charming facsimile not just for the dance moves and singing voice but, more crucially, for channeling Jackson\u2019s sweetness.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael\u201d concludes on an oddly and \u2014 considering where things would ultimately go for Jackson \u2014 completely false note of triumph. But when the movie sticks to the music, as it often does in copious concert performances, it\u2019s hard not to be moved. There is an undeniable thrill in being transported back to a more innocent America awakening to the power of pop spectacle, when arenas sang in unison to \u201cMan in the Mirror\u201d and \u201cHuman Nature.\u201d The nostalgia of \u201cMichael\u201d is for more than Michael Jackson. But blindly believing only in that celebrity, in that fantasy, is repeating a sad history all over again.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael,\u201d a Lionsgate release in theaters Thursday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for some thematic material, language, and smoking. Running time: 127 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.winnipegfreepress.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMichael\u201d slides a sequin glove over the pop star\u2019s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson\u2019s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua\u2019s movie is sanctioned by Jackson\u2019s estate and its producers include Jackson\u2019s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2382834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2382833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Movie-Review-In-\u2018Michael-the-King-of-Pop-is-resurrected.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2382833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2382835,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382833\/revisions\/2382835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2382834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2382833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2382833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2382833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}