Who's Bad: MICHAEL

Basically no one involved in Michael wanted to make an honest story of Michael Jackson’s life. That’s not unusual for a biopic officially approved by a cautious estate. (It happened to Bob Marley and Freddie Mercury recently.) But the details of Jackson’s life are so darkly troubled that not even the emptiest hagiography turning a deliberate blind eye to the worst of his eccentricities and criminality can fully escape the gravitational pull of the freak show tragedy of his tabloid final decades. We simply know the story too well. And anyone paying attention knows its contradictions and complications are far more fascinating than an easy greatest hits skim can do justice. Here’s a movie that tells the story of a talented little boy whose abusive father makes into a song-and-dance star as part of a sibling band. As a young adult he goes solo and becomes a superstar while awkwardly, eventually, extricating his own ambition from his family ties. Along the way he makes some of the catchiest, grooviest, and most successful, pop music of the 20th century. That’s all undeniably true. But here’s also a movie with Peter Pan fantasies, predatory adults, a backyard zoo, plastic surgery, pain medication, and a pet chimpanzee. It has a scene where the emotionally stunted Jackson makes his security guard take him to a toy store and, while waiting in line, is interrupted by a starstruck mother who makes her reluctant young son get an autograph. And this is the version that isn’t going to get into his psychological problems or abuse allegations? It’s like someone left in all the signifiers while leaving out what they signified. It’s a glossy, up-tempo celebration ominously pointing at the tragedy that’s on the cutting room floor. 

Director Antoine Fuqua directs a capable, anonymous production that’s supposed to be nonstop music and recreations of iconic moments from concerts and music videos. That’s all faithfully recreated here. Jackson is played by his nephew Jaafar, who has the look and the moves with an eerie impression of the fluttery high speaking voice and belting singing tone. The supporting cast, from the rest of the Jackson 5 to Motown’s Berry Gordy and beyond, are completely anonymous. (You can’t even tell the brothers apart, while Colman Domingo’s father figure is a vivid, cartoonish, presence.) There’s little attempt to make Jackson himself a character; he’s just a fragile boy pushed along by the march of time. Forget about interrogating a scene like when he, a grown man, grumbles that his adult siblings would rather go have sex with their girlfriends than stay home and play Twister with him. He’s just too pure. (Sure.) The movie is entirely and naively shallow surface. It has the notes. It has the rhythm. It has the dances. It has the costumes. But all those are so empty that they can’t stop the oddities and ugly implications from fighting their way up from beneath the glossy surface. We can’t forget who we’re watching, and where it’s all headed, even as the movie is convinced it isn’t telling that story. It ends on a high note—Jackson in 1988 freed at last from his father’s grasp, on a solo tour singing a big hit—and this text: “His Story Continues.” Given where it’s headed, that feels like a threat. 

Romancing Atone: YOU, ME & TUSCANY and THE DRAMA

If I started listing everything that annoyed me about Kat Coiro’s You, Me & Tuscany it’d start sounding like my reaction was more negative than it was. It’s a big, bright, broad romantic comedy and grooves along pleasantly. It has a cute leading lady (Halle Bailey) playing an aspiring chef who cashes out her meager savings to visit Tuscany. Once there she crashes in a vacant villa and is promptly mistaken for the owner’s fiancé. She decides to go with it because the big stereotypical Italian family are so welcoming and lovely—and travel into each scene en masse like the family in the Big Fat Greek Wedding movies. (No wonder Nia Vardalos cameos in the first scene). As she learns to love life under the Tuscan sun, our heroine’s quickly attracted to a handsome vineyard owner (Regé-Jean Page) who feels a connection with her but doesn’t pursue it, thinking she’s engaged and all. Quite a conundrum. But it’ll work itself out more or less how you’d expect. There’s something to be said for the comforting rhythms of formula storytelling. It almost carries the movie over low-res establishing shots, clunky ADR exposition, flat chemistry from the leads, and a supporting friend character who exists almost exclusively to repeat plot points over FaceTime. Funnily enough for a movie about a wannabe chef, it just adds to a feeling that the whole thing is just a little undercooked, under-spiced, and on too low a boil. It’s the kind of middling dish that gets the job done, but doesn’t truly satisfy. But how often do we get rom-coms that rise to even that level these days, especially in a theater? 

Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama is also technically a romantic comedy, insofar as it is about romance and has a consistently percolating sense of humor bubbling over into hugely funny moments. But to call it a rom-com would lead potential viewers astray. For all its surface gloss and handsome New York apartments, this is a spiky, prickly movie about a relationship on the brink of marriage and the precipice of disaster. It’s the week of the wedding and the happy couple are given a trust exercise. Name the worst thing you’ve ever done. Big mistake. Robert Pattinson’s flustered Brit — he’s giving 90’s Hugh Grant — becomes slightly, slowly, then all at once undone by the admission of his fiancé (Zendaya). I shan’t spoil her answer, but it’s worth mentioning the movie’s tricky tone and prankish social satire comes out of the sheer liability of the leads and the jolt of electric discourse that their confessions inspire. The movie smirks as it watches others with comparable, or worse, behaviors get sanctimonious, and as it finds characters asking if you can ever really know another person. Here’s a movie about the baggage everyone carries, and how difficult it can be to open it up for someone, even the closest someones, knowing that you’re risking judgment. And, if you’re getting married, you know their baggage will be weighing you down, too. It allows scenes of usual pre-marriage jitters to compound the stress through squirming social situations and escalating psychological sweatiness. The movie’s a sly conversation starter like that, tossing up awkward behaviors and philosophical posturing and watching as the characters flail to get back to a livable normal. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.