This saccharine, reverential biopic about controversial music legend Michael Jackson is set to be one of the worst films of 2026 – removing “everything that might be deemed dramatic”.
It’s bad. It’s bad. It’s really, really bad. The new Michael Jackson biopic, Michael, is produced by several of his relatives and close associates, so no one expected it to be a searing portrait of the controversial star. But it’s still surprising that they’ve made such a bland and barely competent daytime TV movie.
A chronological plod through Jackson’s time in the Jackson 5, and his subsequent solo success, the film’s narrative stops in the mid-1980s, before he was accused of child abuse, and it removes everything from the story that might be deemed contentious. It removes everything that might be deemed dramatic, too.
What’s left is scene after scene of record-industry bigwigs telling Jackson how amazingly talented he is, and of his horrible dad (Colman Domingo, barely recognisable under prosthetic make-up) scuttling over like an evil goblin and snarling: “Remember your family, Michael!”
The man himself is played by his own nephew, Jaafar Jackson, who must have been cast for his physical resemblance to the real person. He certainly wasn’t cast for his ability to express emotion – not that he’s required to do much of that.
When he’s not on stage or in a recording studio, Jackson smiles as he watches television with his mother (Nia Long), smiles as he visits sick children in hospital, and smiles as he buys animals for his private menagerie. “They’re not my pets, they’re my friends,” he smiles. When he sings Billie Jean, the viewer is left to wonder how this sweet and saintly innocent could possibly have written such an urgent, paranoid and sexually charged song.
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