There are three types of people in this world: those who consider Michael Jackson to have been one of the great geniuses of late 20th century popular culture, those who consider him to be a freak who unintentionally personified many of the ills of his society and (thankfully) those who didn’t particularly notice or care about the pop star known as Michael or MJ.
This is It is most certainly a film made for the first group, although it does have at least a few fragments to offer others. No, critics won’t find a shred of substance shedding light on the truth of who this unusual man was. And those who don’t know him will come away with little new information save for a few catchy tunes to get their feet tapping. But Michael Jackson fans, well, you’re in for a treat: nearly two hours of rehearsal footage that’s been edited into something that approaches ‘the concert Michael never lived to give.’
Plucked from out of dozens of hours of footage shot during four months of rehearsals for a 2009 concert series that was planned to mark Jackson’s return to the stage after a decade away, there’s less ‘behind the scenes’ here than you might expect and a lot more near-perfect performance footage. Yes, there are obligatory clips of auditions and early rehearsals, but if you took the movie as a whole as a measure of what the creative, constructive and fine-tuning processes were for Jackson, you’d be way off track.
Never intended to be a true-life picture of what’s involved in creating a pop star’s concert spectacular, this is instead a loving paean to MJ. He’s onscreen the vast majority of the film, even though the actual process of creating the concerts involved a whole lot of work the star wouldn’t have been part of. And – of course – those who worshipped Jackson would be a whole lot less interested in seeing the non-MJ behind the scenes work (which is covered in the film, but fleetingly) than they are in seeing the man himself onstage one last time.
There’s no insight here into what made Jackson the ultimate example of a person uncomfortable in his own skin and perhaps that’s just as well for a movie released so soon after his June 2009 death. Those inclined to go there will never run out of things to say about Jackson’s ever-changing appearance or his questionable personal proclivities; some could even make legitimate arguments as to why it’s uncool to worship anyone so frequently accused of having harmed children.
But This is It is about none of that. Those who are Jackson fans will love what they get out of this film, as there are songs, old and new, moments of candid chit-chat with the star and plenty of effusive, even adulatory, praise by others involved with the production. Jackson critics might take pleasure in suggesting ulterior motives to Jackson’s lyrics and some of his titles (Too Young and I Can’t Help It, for example), but it’s hard to deny the catchiness of so many of the songs he created, nor his desire to be a spectacular showman.
If you’ve got the slightest interest in Michael Jackson’s music, then this is the movie for you. If you think highly of him as an artist, performer or person, then it’s for you. If you want to learn the truth about the icon, then you’re looking at the wrong film, ‘cause you’re not going to find it here.
If you’ve got the slightest interest in Jackson’s music, then this is the movie for you. If you want to learn the truth about the icon, then you’re looking at the wrong film.- Brian Webster
