Michael (2026) Review
The long awaited and anticipated Michael Jackson biopic, Michael hits theaters. This is one that a lot of people were very excited for. It’s tackling one of the most iconic musical figures of all time, that’s also one of the more controversial figures of all time. I went into this film with large amounts of skepticism, because I wasn’t sure how you tackle a film about such a complicated figure with a troubled past.
It also didn’t help that the early reviews for the film weren’t great. It debuted with a 27% on Rotten Tomatoes. As of right now (4/23/26), it’s at 40% with 163 reviews counted. This movie is not going to have a great Rotten Tomatoes score by the end of the weekend when a majority of the critics will have seen the film.
NOTE: One thing that’s important to state here is that I’m not the biggest Michael Jackson fan. I think he has some great songs, but he’s never been a musical artist that I’ve loved the way that many other people have.
The Good
The big part of the film that stood out to me is sort of what I just mentioned, but the soundtrack for the film is of course great. Whether the film is focusing on the Jackson 5 or Michael Jackson’s solo career, it’s filled with great music that makes you want to tap your feet along to it when it’s playing. There was a guy about three seats down for me that was dancing in his chair during some of the musical sequences. I feel like the people that see this movie opening weekend with a packed crowd are going to have an absolute blast with this film, and I think people are going to be cheering and clapping throughout the entire film. I don’t know if it’ll get as crazy as A Minecraft Movie’s theaters, but I think you can expect to see a lot of people in Michael Jackson cosplay dancing around the theater and moonwalking. My favorite Michael Jackson song is “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”, but there’s an argument to be had about five different Michael Jackson songs being his best song.
The big performance standout for me was Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson, Micahel Jackson’s father. I thought that Domingo was a lock for best supporting actor at the Oscars, I think he’s great in the film and totally worthy of a nomination. With these bad reviews (no pun intended), I’m very curious what his chances are like now. Regardless, Domingo delivers an absolutely fantastic performance in this film. It’s a true transformative performance where you know it’s Domingo playing him, but you don’t see Domingo at all. All you’re seeing is Joe Jackson, this abusive father that isn’t nice to his kid, abuses them, and wants this sense of power and dominance. The transformative performance certainly does help with all of the makeup and prosthetics being put onto Domingo. But even with that, he’s still able to disappear into this character that basically acts as the movie’s villain. It’s a musical biopic based on true events and these films don’t normally have villains. This movie 100% does and that was interesting to me, that they were able to paint this figure based around the idea of his abusive father.
Finally, we’ll talk about what this film does and doesn’t touch on. But I think with where this film ends and what goes down in the third act, it sets up some very interesting and deeper dynamics that I think will provide more depth to these characters. There’s a title card at the end that indicates they 100% have plans to do another film. Given I’m fairly negative of the film, I’m not excited for that movie but I’m curious as to where it’s going.
The Bad
The big thing here in relation to doing a Michael Jackson biopic is you have to address the elephant in the room, which are the allegations. This is a big reason why the critics score is so low, the film doesn’t address or touch on the allegations. The key thing to note about this film is that the film ends in 1984, several years before the allegations started. This film is all about the relationship between Michael and Joe Jackson and tells of his rise and legacy. But that’s almost the biggest problem with the film, the film doesn’t show any of Michael’s flaws. The film romanticizes the icon that is Michael Jackson and presents him as the underdog fighting back against his very abusive father. The conflict in the film doesn’t come from Michael's struggles, it comes from the villain of the film, Joe Jackson. I get that if the film is tackling a time period that takes place before the allegations start, you shouldn’t force those allegations into here. But it provides a very uncomfortable experience as we’re watching a film that romanticizes and celebrates the life of a very complicated man who had multiple sexual related allegations against him. The movie fails at trying to have the audience root for this guy when you know where his story goes and what’s going to happen in the second part of the film.
I know what I’m about to say is going to be the hottest take of my review, but I didn’t really care for Jaafar Jackson’s performance. A lot of people have been celebrating his performance and saying that it should get all sorts of awards love. To me, his whole performance felt like an imitation of Michael Jackson more so than embodying Michael Jackson and becoming him. The way that Colman Domingo was able to disappear and transform into Joe Jackson, I didn’t get that at all with Jaafar. Everything from the voice to the look of him is very very superficial and like I was watching somebody parodying Michael Jackson and not becoming him. When he’s up on stage and he’s dancing and performing, the dance movies are there and he’s doing a great job. But he struggles when the film tries to do more of the dramatic and character scenes. How much of that is related to Jaafar’s limited acting range, or much of it is because they didn’t have a great script that allowed Jaafar to dive deeper into the story? I think it’s a good mix of both elements that all hurt Jaafar’s performance and me being able to buy Jaafar playing Michael Jackson, his uncle.
The next negative kind of goes back to what I just talked about, but the film’s script isn’t great. The film feels like a greatest hits montage of Michael Jackson’s life without allowing the audience to fully dive into who he is. The film will spend 5-10 minutes at a time focusing on the big musical numbers and the performance. But anytime there’s the character moments and showing the success of his career it just montages over it. Because it’s montaging over so much and trying to tackle so much, there’s so many elements that feel underdeveloped. The big example of this comes from Michael’s siblings who have no development whatsoever. The Jackson 5 play a massive part in the film, but none of the brothers have a distinct personality or anything about them that makes them interesting and stand out. One of the possible interesting aspects of the film was Michael deciding to go solo and fire his father. The film allows Joe to have thoughts about Michael going solo, but the siblings’ perspective on this isn’t present at all. That could’ve made some very interesting dynamics and moments for the siblings that weren’t at all present in the film.
Finally, the film’s editing was very distracting and off putting to me. This is from the same editor as Bohemian Rhapsody which is infamous for having terrible editing that’s been picked on ever since the film came out. This film’s editing also doesn’t work really at all and pulled me out of the sequences. It felt like the editor was trying to be clever with the editing rather than using editing that best suited the film. During the concert sequences, I could barely tell what was going on because the film’s editing was so choppy and there were so many cuts that you couldn’t see anything. The worst example of this is when we first see the Jaafar moonwalk. It should be this cool moment with a single camera angle but instead it shows about 5 or 6 different angles just on this one moment. The best editing in a movie should be editing that you don’t even notice, this movie has a lot of editing that you do notice which makes it distracting.
Final Thoughts: Michael is going to be a very interesting movie as I believe Michael Jackson fans are absolutely going to love this movie. I think for people that see this with a packed crowd, it’s going to be a real crowd pleaser. For me, as a less then casual Michael Jackson fan, I didn’t care for this film at all. There’s some good elements in here, mainly Colman Domingo’s performance. But everything from the script to the lead performance I thought fell flat.
The Score: 7.6/10 (C)
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