Joe wants to retake control. Addressing his sons behind an opulent wooden desk, looking more corporate executive than father figure, Papa Jackson (an imposing Colman Domingo) presents his plan for a Jacksons comeback: a new tour and live album. \u201cThe Jackson family is the brand,\u201d Joe barks. \u201cThat\u2019s our Coca-Cola, and we need to start selling!\u201d Michael, hurt by his father\u2019s domineering demands, storms out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scene illustrates the emotional conflict at the center of Fuqua\u2019s gleaming theme park of a movie: Michael\u2019s desire to seek creative autonomy and break away from his father\u2019s paternalistic control. But if Joe Jackson is the tyrannical villain of Michael<\/em> and Michael (played by real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson) the misunderstood hero, the deeply confused film can\u2019t help but reflect the older man\u2019s brand-oriented worldview. Here is a movie that sanitizes Michael Jackson\u2019s legacy, elides those distressing allegations, presents him as a troubled if lovably eccentric genius, and repackages his catalog for maximum profit by the beneficiaries of the Jackson Estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our story begins in mid-sixties Gary, Indiana, where steel worker Joe Jackson, a patient zero for the malevolent stage parent, is molding his five boys into a musical sensation. Fronted by the boyish voice and infectious charms of young Michael (Juliano Krue Valdi), The Jackson 5 becomes a hit at local talent shows, then clubs, then regional tours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joe says things like \u201cIn this life, you\u2019re either a winner or you\u2019re a loser\u201d and whips Michael when he gets slack about rehearsing. The elder Jackson\u2019s drill-sergeant tactics pay off when the brotherly band hits it big and lands a record deal with Motown. (There, Michael meets Berry Gordy, a father figure he seems more fond of than his real dad.) We get the requisite montage of Jackson 5 hits, and soon the family has upgraded from Indiana to a palatial estate in Encino, California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story skips ahead to 1979: Michael\u2019s going solo with Off the Wall<\/em> and leaving his bandmates in the dust. Naturally, there are \u201cDon\u2019t Stop \u2018Til You Get Enough\u201d and \u201cWorkin\u2019 Day and Night\u201d needle drops to remind you that the man\u2019s post-Jacksons\/pre-scandal catalog really was that good. He\u2019s now portrayed by Jaafar Jackson, whose performance is plainly imitative: He nails the androgynous voice and dazzling footwork, but gives little sense of MJ\u2019s interiority beyond his tremendous ambition and childlike nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking of childlike nature, Michael\u2019s growing eccentricities are played for laughs. He seems to relate to animals and children more than adults. He befriends a kid in a checkout line with talk of video games. He brings home a pet chimp, Bubbles, and then a giraffe, baffling his siblings. There are multiple comedic sequences where Bubbles is just roaming around MJ\u2019s house, causing trouble. On the bright side, there are some thrilling setpieces recreating significant moments in Michael\u2019s early career, from the Motown 25 concert where he debuted the Moonwalk to the audacious \u201cThriller\u201d video shoot where he bossed around John Landis. The music sounds phenomenal; the dialogue, not so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the pivotal stretch between Off the Wall<\/em> (1979) and Thriller<\/em> (1982), Michael meets a young lawyer, John Branca (Miles Teller in a horrid wig), and hires him as his attorney. Branca really believes in Michael, you see \u2014 \u201cI believe there\u2019s no one like you,\u201d he tells the singer \u2014 and is soon tasked with firing Michael\u2019s father for him. Branca, who is a co-executor of Michael\u2019s estate, comes off exceptionally well in this film; he is also credited as its producer. Probably just a coincidence, though!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the supporting performances, Domingo\u2019s is the only one imbued with real stakes and presence. He persuasively embodies Joe\u2019s mix of megalomania and insecurity. Mostly, in screenwriter John Logan\u2019s telling, secondary characters exist purely to feed Michael bland pep talks or crush his spirit. As matriarch Katherine Jackson, Nia Long is given little to do besides deliver rote Hallmark-isms like \u201cYou have a very special light\u2026 And you have to let your light shine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, Michael<\/em> is too busy squeezing cheap laughs out of the giraffe in the room to address the elephant in the room: the multiple child abuse allegations that dogged Jackson during and after his lifetime. Reportedly, the film was to devote much of its third act to the 1993 scandal (presumably with the aim of exonerating MJ), but the filmmakers were forced to scrap those scenes and shoot a new ending due to an overlooked clause in a settlement with one of the star\u2019s accusers. The new climax, in which Michael commands an ecstatic crowd during the Bad<\/em> tour, is musically exhilarating but dramatically inert. It feels like an arbitrary end point, as if to insist: \u201cNothing to see here; it\u2019s all smooth sailing for MJ after this!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look, an estate-sanctioned MJ biopic was never going to grapple seriously with the allegations. But did this one have to constantly draw our attention to Michael\u2019s preoccupation with children? After his 1984 Pepsi commercial injury, we see the star in a burn ward, comforting injured kids, then telling Branca he wants to find a way to help those kids. And must there be so many scenes of Michael reading or referencing Peter Pan? Knowing what we know, these recurring motifs leave an undeniably sinister taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/4guysmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Michael-Lionsgate-Films-3.webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Michael:](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.metroweekly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Michael-Lionsgate-Films-11.jpg?resize=960%2C640&ssl=1\")