This is It (Friday, October 30, 2009) (154)

When I first saw the trailer for this documentary, about seven weeks after Michael Jackson died, I had a bad feeling about it. I didn't understand why I would want to see rehearsal footage from an erstwhile concert that never took place. I figured Jackson would be as much a 'past-star' on stage as he was at the end of his life; I worried that his voice and body would not sound or look very good. As it turns out, my worries were somewhat confirmed and somewhat wrong. This is not a good movie, but Jackson was much more physical and mobile than I expected.

The biggest problem with the film is that it would seem (based on the look of the footage and an opening title) that the film was shot for internal use only and edited together to make it as 'concerty' a movie possible. But the movie is not a concert. It is rehearsal footage. Most of the 'songs' in the film are just run-throughs of the dancers' blocking with some dancing. MJ sings only about half of the songs, relying on pre-recorded vocals (with live band music) on most tracks. On some songs he sings at bit more, but the mix is strangely very quiet on the vocals and stronger on the the band (I can only imagine that this has something to do with the bad quality of the vocals available).

This is all very frustrating. I feel like the footage we see is not good enough for a documentary; I feel ripped off. There is great footage of Jackson dancing (he seems to still be a great dancer in the months leading up to his death), but not enough substantive stuff for a feature film. We get the outlines of most songs - all the big hits: Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean, Man in the Mirror, Human Nature, Bad, etc. - but none of the soul of these songs. I would rather have sat in my living room and listened to a CD of Thriller or Off the Wall - or even HIStory, disc 1.

Making everything more strange is that there are brief interviews with some of the dancers and band members where they talk about how *amazing* Jackson is. (I mean, he's paying their salaries - so I don't know why they would say anything else.) This hagiography is no big surprise (I don't really expect them to raise questions about his pedophilia or obsession with plastic surgery), but it sort of feels like they're all forcing the issue too much. I'm sick of the revisionist history on the man. He was once brilliant and beautiful and became a physical and social freak show. This was not our misunderstanding of him; he was the problem himself.

A few surprises and observations in the film: Beat It is a song that does not age well. It sounds very dated now and the guitar solo bridge is trite and silly; Human Nature is really a beautiful song - possibly Jackson's most beautiful; At times, Jackson looks like a kabuki dancer with a face covered in make-up, even when he's not wearing make-up; The moment when he talks about his in-ear monitor being a 'fist in his ear' is hilarious - but only for the dirty joke that comes to mind; It's not clear that Jackson is a nice person to work with - not that he's a jerk, but his personality does not really come through in the film.

I think the saddest part of the film and the biggest problem with the fact that it is simply rehearsal footage, is that Jackson never speaks for himself about his feelings and never talks directly to the camera about what is going on. He speaks to the director of the show (and the movie), Kenny Ortega, and he speaks to the band and the dancers, but he never speaks to us (or to a director off-camera in an interview, as it typical for a doc like this). This made me think that he is a man (animal) in a cage. We see him doing stuff and interacting with people, but we never hear from him. Maybe this is the deepest part of the film - after all, this is who he was at the end of his life.

Stars: 1 of 4