Publication Date: 04-25-2026

Michael (2026) review

Dir. Antoine Fuqua

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

When you consider what made the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, or even Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, successful, one aspect jumps out. Both movies focused on distinct chapters in the lives of their iconic subjects. The former focused on Dylan’s shift from an acoustic sound to an electric one; the latter showed the mental battles Bruce experienced while making his album Nebraska. This approach was distinctly different from something like Bohemian Rhapsody, which tried to be a comprehensive look at Freddie Mercury and the meteoric rise of Queen, but it felt truncated and lacked detail and specificity.

Antoine Fuqua’s Michael suffers from the same problems as Bohemian Rhapsody. In attempting to cover the life of Michael Jackson (up until 1988), it feels sanitized to the point where it’s without much conflict. You’ve heard of “rise and fall” stories. This two-hour film is one long rise. It’s the predictable result of the Jackson estate having ironclad control over the film, which reportedly dedicated much of its third act to the child abuse allegations that engulfed Jackson’s life and damaged his reputation before the family’s attorneys used a previous lawsuit that forced those involved to rewrite and reshoot a significant chunk of the film.

Consequently, the Michael Jackson biopic we get is squeaky-clean in its presentation of the King of Pop’s life, and it’s more interested in adoring its subject than probing him. Competently staged and directed, it’s engineered to be a celebration of Jackson for his most devoted fans, and it has ingredients that make it a compelling watch, but very little that makes it feel deep.

Condensing 18 years into a two-hour runtime, the film shows Jackson (played by Michael’s real-life nephew, Jaafar Jackson) as the young superstar leader of the Jackson 5, complete with his four brothers. Not only raising but managing the boys’ business affairs is their abusive and aggressive father, Joe (Colman Domingo), who calls all the shots while his wife, Katherine (Nia Long), looks concerned from afar. Everyone can see Michael is impressive from an early age. He dances like James Brown and sings with a voice that even seasoned soul singers would love to possess. But Joe is the hardest on Michael, beating him with his belt and putting a world’s worth of pressure on his shoulders from a young age.

Led by Michael, the Jackson 5’s success takes them from their humble family home in Gary, Indiana all the way to Encino by the late 1970s. It’s there when Michael teams up with renowned producer Quincy Jones (Klendrick Samson) to record his debut solo album. He connects with entertainment lawyer John Branca (Miles Teller), and immediately instructs him to fire Joe as his manager; he does so via fax. Despite infuriating his father, it gives Michael the necessary freedom to work uninhibited, recording songs like “Beat It,” “Thriller,” and “Billie Jean,” which would go on to become iconic hits and the best music videos of all-time.

During his downtime, he turns his lavish home into a menagerie of exotic animals, complete with a llama, a giraffe, and Bubbles the chimp, who serve as his closest friends. A memorable moment occurs when Jackson returns home to his brothers hoping to play Twister. The now grown boys have no interest in playing a children’s game, but it was Michael who missed out on a significant portion of his childhood. Indifferent to their remarks, he retreats to his basement to play Twister with Bubbles.

Another great moment comes when Michael arrives at a warehouse rife with real-life gangsters he envisions as key members of his “Beat It” music video. He sees it as a pop song with the capabilities of expressing the authentic anger the disenfranchised feel on a daily basis. As the record sales and attention soar to new heights, Joe tries to broker a tour deal behind Michael’s back. Conditional in the deal is Jackson filming a Pepsi commercial, which led to his hair and scalp catching fire, and later, the true severing of business ties with his bastard father.

If you’re familiar with Jackson’s life story, you won’t learn a whole lot you didn’t already know. Maybe the most insightful tidbit in the entire film is how CBS Records President Walter Yenikoff — played by Mike Myers, who humorously played another completely different record exec in Bohemian Rhapsody — had to strong-arm MTV to show Michael Jackson’s music videos on their network.

Michael feels like a filmed playlist. Any time the opportunity for character insight or controversy could appear, writer John Logan instead whisks us to the filming of the “Thriller” video, or Michael performing “Human Nature.” Probably 30 minutes of the film is dedicated to music-laden montages that are obvious fan service. At least these scenes are nice to look at. In his acting debut, Jaafar Jackson — the 29-year-old son of Jermaine — nails Michael’s mannerisms, electrostatic moves, and vocal inflections, all difficult feats even for someone who is blood-related. It’s a great physical performance, but his dramatic poise is hardly tested with such a sunny script. Debatably the best performance in the picture is Colman Domingo. Under a heap of prosthetics, Domingo’s Joe even looks like a monster, and his gruff, gravelly tone-of-voice coupled with his sudden entrances in scenes loans Michael a noticeable level of anxiety.

Originally conceived as a two-part movie, Michael ends by teasing a sequel. If the child abuse allegations against Jackson can’t be formally addressed, I’m unsure of how a second part would even work. It’s clearly not a story that Logan and company are able to tell, with the Jackson family’s financial mitts all over this project. What could’ve stood alongside some other considerably strong music biopics of the last couple years instead plays like an inoffensive highlight reel of an icon’s career. There are worse offenses, sure, but there are also better movies.

My review of Captain EO (1986)
My review of Moonwalker (1988)
My review of Michael Jackson’s Ghosts (1996)
My review of Michael Jackson’s This Is It (2009)
My review of Bad 25 (2012)
My review of Leaving Neverland (2019)

Starring: Jaafar Jackson, Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Juliano Valdi, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, Laura Harrier, Jessica Sula, Miles Teller, and Mike Myers. Directed by: Antoine Fuqua.