Everybody on the planet knows that Michael Jackson died this past summer and everybody knows that he was in the middle of rehearsing for a 50 date stint in London. That tour was entitled This Is It and as the name implies, was to be the final live performances of his career. After his death, Jackson’s representatives revealed that everything, including dress rehearsals, had been filmed by the production company putting the show on. They decided to make a film as a final gesture to fans (and, no doubt, to recoup millions of dollars lost on the production itself) so everybody could see what the King of Pop had planned for his last act. I scored some tickets to the preview screening in Lincoln tonight and just got back from seeing the flick. I know you are all curious about the big question: does he look like he’s about to fall over and die, or is he the vibrant performer we all remember? Read on…

The film begins with a crawl explaining what I just said above before dedicating the film “for the fans”. What transpires over the next two hours is what I can best describe as a mixed bag. The film is mainly, and probably rightfully so, a collection of MJ singing (and sometimes dancing) his most famous songs. Interspliced between songs is behind the scenes footage, interviews with the dancers and performers accompanying him, and a few new videos that were created for the concert, including most notably a brand new Thriller video. First, let’s talk about what the film gets right.

There is a ton of MJ footage. The film starts off a little worrisome. It opens with dancers literally crying because they are in the presence of this guy. I gotta be honest, it comes off as totally staged. It’s really melodramatic and I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody was like “they just made that for the film”. Of course, I also wouldn’t be surprised if this were the legitimate reaction of these people. Michael Jackson had a way of affecting people on an emotional level that was, arguably, unparalleled in entertainment history. It was a blessing and a curse. While it’s fine that director Kenny Ortega felt the need to include the performers awestruck slurping of this genius, nobody at the movie actually cares to watch that. We came to see Michael Jackson, not backup dancer #4. Quickly, Ortega moves away from the dancers and puts the focus squarely on MJ. He performs most of his greatest hits. For the most part, he still nails everything as a singer and his infamous perfectionism is captured in brief moments, such as when he tries to explain to a keyboardist that the note “needs to simmer” and when he gets slightly irritated that the tech people aren’t following his cues.

There are also some humanizing moments. One such scene involves him using in ear monitors. During the performance he has noticeable difficulty singing. After it’s over he starts explaining that it feels like someone is driving a fist into his eardrum. He starts describing how it feels in this really complicated manner, to which Ortega then says “so you want us to turn the volume in your ear mic down?”. MJ sort of stands there, like he doesn’t understand something so simple. It doesn’t come across as a moment of stupidity, but one of a guy who just has no earthly understanding of how to communicate with people. And this is throughout the film. MJ always describes everything in an emotional, abstract way. Watching professional musicians try to decipher terms of simmering, burning, and love is funny. But it’s also clear that the guy knows exactly what he wants, he just can’t easily communicate it. I suppose that’s a trait of genius.

There is a lot of other interesting stuff. Most of the behind-the-scene stuff with MJ is interesting, but there isn’t a whole lot of it. There is only a handful of actual non-performance scenes where he is featured prominently. The rehearsal footage itself a mixed bag. On one hand, MJ performs great on some songs, and others not so much. Probably the most disappointing things for fans is what MJ doesn’t do. For example, he performs Billie Jean, but doesn’t moonwalk. In fact, there is no moonwalking at all in the film, which I and others in the theater found extremely odd. Smooth Criminal  has a cool new video (with Humphrey Bogart chasing MJ with a tommie gun after flirting with Rita Hayworth) yet the famous dance moves are only briefly shown at the end. And there is no anti-gravity lean. Thriller and Beat It are both performed, but the problem is that since these are just rehearsals, for the most part he looks like he’s just going through the motions. Don’t get me wrong, he dances in this film. A lot. But it’s usually his famous robotic body movements and not the choreographical prowess we all associate with him in his videos. You can’t help but be a little disappointed that you don’t get to see that to the extent you wish you could. Keep in mind, this was a 50 year old guy, so I understand that he ain’t going to dance like the 20 year olds backing him up, and you can tell the filmmakers did their absolute best to put the top pieces of footage together, but don’t go into this thinking you will be seeing 80′s MJ. Of everything in the film, the singing is the highlight. The dude still sounded incredible, even at fifty, and it looked to me that they didn’t use any type of lip synching (MJ would even not sing during certain parts, later to be filled by his own recorded backing vocals). All things considered, even with a somewhat diminished palette of dance moves, the package was still amazing when coupled with his vocal work.

In the end, This Is It is an interesting, if obviously packaged look at what MJ was doing in the weeks before his death. There are no interviews with MJ himself included in the film (whereas the film is littered with interviews of his fellow performers that you could care less about) and you only get brief glimpses of behind-the-scenes moments. Those that are there are good but you can’t shake this feeling that Ortega and the other filmmakers were deliberately not showing something. Earlier I mentioned that many people would be interested, probably out of morbid curiosity, to know what MJ looked like. He was definitely skinny, but there isn’t any point in the film when he looks drugged out or anything. He is portrayed as a personable, happy guy trying to make the best concert possible. Whether or not that was what actually happened in the Staples Center this past summer is something we’ll never know. We’re only getting this movie through the eyes of pro-MJ gatekeepers, but it’s at least clear that the guy could still put on a show and was pretty enthusiastic about what he was doing. The movie ends sort of abruptly, with a performance of Man in the Mirror. One other thing that sort of bugged me was that there was no video montage of his entire career. There is maybe 30 seconds  of footage from his storied career in a brief montage with no context or explanation. This Is It is pretty much exclusively focused on what the tour would have been and the MJ of 2009. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it would have been nice to recap his career instead of just beginning and ending with the end of it.

If you are a fan ofMichael Jackson, this flick is a must see. You’ll probably be a bit disappointed expectations-wise (really, no Moonwalking) but it’s still a cool look at a genius in action. If you aren’t a big fan of Michael Jackson, there isn’t much here to cause you to check it out for curiosity purposes. It doesn’t offer any deep insight into the man other than that he was an extreme environmentalist and likes love. a lot of love.

Oh, and though the fx work of the new Thriller video looked cool, c’mon, you can’t fucking make another Thriller video.

C+

p.s. I’m still stunned that there is no Moonwalking in this flick. I mean, his performance of Billie Jean goes on for like 10 minutes and everybody in the audience kept expecting that he was just building up to his signature move. And then nothing. He does the entire dance…except moonwalk. WTF, MJ?

Orianthi’s debut album will be released on October 27th, and don’t miss Orianthi in the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It, out on the 28th. Her single “According to You” is now streaming on her official MySpace page.