What is Michael, the biopic of Michael Jackson, worth? (critical)

How can we separate the man from the music, when the very concept of a biography of a pop genius is theoretically to bring them together? This is the challenge that Antoine Fuqua attempts to take up in the most anticipated film of the week.

In development since 2019, the biopic on Michael Jackson directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Equalizer) finally arrives in cinemas, where it is promised to be a huge success despite the dark aspects of the King of Pop’s life. Our review of Michael:

You have the feeling of being in the cinema. Normal, you have paid for your seat, validated your card, chosen your seat, bought your popcorn. But you are elsewhere, in a sort of parallel dimension, a facsimile of a film, part hologram, part live Pathé, where signals and issues collide with each other. We would have to succeed in the biopic of a man who is both idolized and ultra-controversial but without angering anyone, while respecting the living, the dead, the victims and the agreements made with them, the fans, the beneficiaries, the memories of each other and everyone. We should separate the man from the music, whereas the very concept of a filmed biography, especially that of a pop genius, is theoretically to bring them together, like two sides of the same coin.

The bet of the film, both commercial and artistic, seems to have been to play on the signs of recognition, the mimicry, the copy as close as possible to the trace of the performer in the collective unconscious (until the Bad tour, in 1987), and to say that if we manage to get close enough to a perfect reproduction (which is often the case here), then it can replace the original in complete safety, like a tamed clone.

In the guise of Jafaar, his nephew, Michael Jackson is a gentle genius and nothing else, friend of animals, of cancer patients, of his mother, his brothers, his bodyguard and his manager. He lines up the planetary tubes that everyone loves, doesn’t hurt a fly and does the moonwalk to perfection. The best version of himself, as The Substance would say. Let yourself go. You are almost at the cinema, almost in front of a film, almost in front of your childhood memories. That’s almost it. Almost.

Paul Firmin

By Antoine Fuqua. With Jaafar Jackson, Colman Domingo, Nia Long… Duration: 2h08. Released April 22, 2026