This Is It

This weekend I decided to buy a ridiculously overpriced Arclight movie ticket and see Michael Jackson’s This Is It. I was a little surprised at all the positive buzz the movie was generating. Nobody loved to kick Michael Jackson more than the press. It turns out that the movie is no great revelatory experience, nor even an emotional farewell to the man. It is, on the other hand, a fantastic and energetic concert film and a good answer to anyone who will ever ask the question of why Michael Jackson meant so much to so many people.

If you like Michael Jackson’s music, you owe it to yourself to hear it pumped out of a great theatrical sound system. Michael’s voice might be a little rough around the edges, but he can still belt it out when he wants to. All of Michael’s biggest hits are here, and I doubt anyone will be complaining that their favorite wasn't included. Unfortunately the audience I saw the film with was incredibly quiet and reserved, but I can imagine that seeing this with the right group of people would be almost as fun as going to the real concert.

Even at age fifty, Michael could still move. He’s so skinny that some of the steps have a weird, puppet like quality to them, but after watching this movie there can be no question that he was one of the best dancers of the 20th century and one of the greatest entertainers of all time. Seeing him nailing the "Thriller" or "Beat It" moves 25 years later is a spectacle indeed.

Some of the set pieces and movies made for the different songs are so over the top that you can’t help but giggle, but like Bram Stoker’s Dracula they’re over the top in the best possible way. If your idea of a good action movie is seeing Michael Jackson in a film noir shootout with Humphrey Bogart (and whose isn’t?) then this concert would have been your cup of tea. Even my dull audience cheered and laughed when the film revealed how Michael would have emerged in the “Thriller” performance. It’s deliciously campy and entirely Michael Jackson.

While the performances were entertaining, what I enjoyed most was the limited glimpses the film gave of Michael at work, tweaking the show and talking to the dancers and musicians. The movie shows Michael Jackson entirely in his element, and one gets the sense (fostered by the estate, let us not forget) that he was a master craftsman and consummate perfectionist. He has opinions on the dancing, the special effects, the lighting; even the tempo of “The Way You Make Me Feel” comes under intense scrutiny. After years of knowing Michael Jackson the freak show, it’s enlightening to see him here as the talented musician and artist he always was.

It’s likely that such a perfectionist would never have wanted these rough, unfinished performances to see the light of day. However, in showing the genesis of the concert that would have been, the film helps us see past the media circus that surrounded Michael’s life and death and get a glimpse of the musical genius underneath. We don’t get any tawdry glimpses of Michael’s private life for our tabloid obsessed culture, but in showing him at work we probably get closer to knowing him than we ever could with a straight up biography. Michael Jackson was about music, dancing, and putting on a hell of a show. The man on stage was the real thing, the freaky man-child just another illusion.

If not for This Is It, Michael Jackson’s last major public appearance would have been the child molestation trial. I’d say the movie is a much better way to go out.