MOVIE REVIEW
'This Is It': Jackson documentary is a fitting farewell
The title, at least, doesn't lie. This IS It. "The final curtain call" as Michael Jackson presciently put it when his comeback tour was announced. All those drugs saw to that.
It's not as if years of Michael Jackson "product" — as they call it in the Entertainment Industrial Complex — aren't still possible. They'll be squeezing juice from his orange for as long as possible, down to the last drop. We could be seeing every last scrap of film footage, hearing every burp that took place in a recording studio.
But they won't be, as is "This Is It," an act of commerce that is also, quite visibly, an act of love.
And that's what's so good about it. Everybody knows we're not seeing full on Michael Jackson performance of his big hits here. There is no "Bad," or "Off the Wall," but, yes — "Billie Jean," "Beat It," "Thriller," "Human Nature," "Smooth Criminal," and some old Jackson Five lullabies and adrenaline pumpers for good measure.
"This Is It"
Three and a half stars out of four
Documentary of Michael Jackson's rehearsals for the final "comeback" tour that was ended before it began by his death from drug overdose. Directed by Kenny Ortega. Rated PG-13, now playing at area theaters.
He even says, flat out, a few times, that he's got to conserve his voice, even though the performer's instincts inside that rail-thin, chemically ravaged body are visibly telling him to pour on the fuel.
Cameras are on. People are digging him. The pilot light is lit. Yes, these are rehearsal films for what was intended to be his big "comeback" from public scandal and disgrace, but when a performer like Michael Jackson is rehearsing, something, somewhere within clearly wants to go for broke.
But that's not the point. This is just end-stage rehearsing for a mammoth concert tour, getting the details right, making sure the bass player phrases with the snap Michael wants, clarifying just how much he's going to need a stage hand's flashlight to get him quickly through the big, gaudy, "open grave" apparatus at the end of "Thriller." This isn' t Michael Jackson, performing genius, giving optimal effort. This is a very rough final sketch of what he and his director, Kenny Ortega, hoped they'd be giving audiences on a couple continents.
What ARE they doing in the film, besides rather brilliantly exploiting a dead maharajah of pop? Who can't help but ask?
The estate — that is, the Jackson family — will profit by a figure that may amount to as much as $100 million. But then in the part of the show where Michael was going to pay tribute to the music he made with his four brothers, he names them all personally, as well as his mother Katherine.
If he thanked father Joe, I didn't hear it. (Maybe he just swallowed it.) Joe Jackson being Joe Jackson — among the more graceless patriarchs in the history of showbiz, the Hulk Hogan of Gary, Ind., R&B — he's already told London papers that a body double was clearly used.
Sony Pictures has denied it — foolishly, I think. In the film that was meant to accompany Jackson's rendition of "Smooth Criminal" (full of Rita Hayworth and Humphrey Bogart), there's a moment where he supposedly jumps through breakaway glass. No Hollywood director anywhere would let a megamillion dollar star of notably frail physique perform a stunt like that in a mid-range shot. OF COURSE, a body double was used. There's also clearly a multiple image shot using one (one of the body types simply isn't Jackson's).
None of that matters. It is Jackson and only Jackson you see when it matters. And a couple of times, he looks terrible — just too darn thin to be completely healthy and with the sweat of performance exertion so plastering his hair that you can see just how cadaverous his face was.
At the same time, you might, in seeing this performance genius at half speed, begin to understand his drug problem a little. The film makes it off-handedly clear just how massive an undertaking a pop tour like this is. Everything depends on the star. Every detail and every nuance has to be to his liking, no matter how gifted the director Ortega is.
Nothing excuses drug abuse. But if you look at this skeletally thin star around whom a nine-figure juggernaut is being fashioned while we watch, you begin to understand a little how, say, sleep might elude him night after night after night.
Who could jangle a body this way and fill a head with so much stuff and then turn it all off at night in a flash?
What's good about "This Is It," is the modesty of it, even in IMAX. They could have stuffed the film with crowd shots — adulating throngs from around the world. They didn't. It's all Michael interacting with his singers, his musicians and dancers. That's where the love comes from.
It's wonderful to watch THEM react to their employer's performing genius. And just as wonderful to hear how he instructs them what he wants. At one point, he tells his keyboardist: "You just bathe in the light." H e wants him to sound like he's just dragging himself out of bed in the morning. Until, asks the keyboardist, he wants "more booty?"
That makes Michael laugh. Yeah, at that point, he wants "more booty."
That's why watching rehearsals is irresistible.
And then, on stage alone for "Billie Jean," you watch his DANCERS watch HIM — in ecstasy at what the boss is doing in front of them. At that point, the pilot light within ignites a blaze. He's got the best and most understanding of audiences and he's almost his full performing self.
The dancers watch him from the apron of the stage and go nuts.
When it's over, Kenny Ortega walks on stage and says. "Church." (Pause.) "Rock and Roll church."
It's a moment that justifies the whole film.
Here's another from this ending to such a stunted and often foul life (too often of his own doing): After "Smooth Criminal," the director tells everyone how he wants them to freeze and hold their pose. Michael is spent, plastered with sweat in front of his troupe. He looks like death barely warmed over from the effort. He looks like a 50-year-old man, for the only time in the film.
But as the director counts off the beats in that dramatic freeze, you see a sudden big, beaming smile light up that exhausted face.
The audience at the screening spontaneously applauded at that split second of hard-earned joy in the life of such a magnificently talented, deeply tragic and horrifically wayward meal ticket.
There won't be any more of them.
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