Michael biopic – Misryoum reviews the 2026 ‘Michael’ biopic—an overly sanitised, reverential TV-style retelling that strips away drama, leaving innovation and contradiction behind.
The new biopic Michael is aiming for reverence, but what lands instead is a sugary, flattened portrait that plays like daytime television—content to be pleasant rather than piercing.
For readers looking for a serious cultural reckoning. the film’s central choice is the problem: it removes “everything that might be deemed dramatic. ” including the moments that would normally shape how audiences argue. doubt. and reassess.. Misryoum can understand why productions featuring a celebrated yet disputed global figure would want to control the tone.. Still. the result feels strangely bloodless—like watching the history of a phenomenon get ironed into something safe enough to broadcast between commercials.
Michael’s structure follows a chronological plod through the Jackson 5 and early solo success. then cuts off in the mid-1980s. before the allegations that dominated later public conversation.. It’s not simply that the story chooses not to go there; it’s that the omission becomes a framing device.. With controversy excised. the film replaces tension with constant affirmation—scene after scene of music-industry gatekeepers praising Jackson’s talent. as though admiration alone can substitute for insight.
Sanitised storytelling turns a cultural storm into a greeting-card
The emotional rhythm is the film’s biggest weakness.. Whatever you think of Michael Jackson as an artist—genius, enigma, lightning rod—he was a driver of spectacle.. Misryoum expected the movie to treat creativity as something combustible: disciplined and obsessive. yes. but also full of pressure. contradiction. and strange human urgency.. Instead. Michael leans into a reverential tone so consistent it begins to feel like a production brief rather than a narrative.
The character work sharpens the sense of oversimplification.. Colman Domingo plays Jackson’s father under prosthetics. positioned as a looming menace—an “evil goblin” stereotype that mostly functions as a shortcut to explanation.. When the story isn’t offering admiration from industry figures. it’s trying to tidy up moral accounting with broad gestures.. The craft may be proficient, but the emotional logic is thin.
Performance and iconography do the heavy lifting
Jaafar Jackson. cast as the singer. clearly carries a physical resemblance to the real person—enough that the film can lean on iconography.. Yet resemblance isn’t the same thing as interpretation.. His portrayal, as Misryoum reads it, doesn’t ask much of the viewer.. There’s little sense of inner weather. of the pressure-cooker atmosphere that made Jackson’s work feel both controlled and haunted.
When Michael watches television with his mother (Nia Long). when he smiles while visiting sick children. when he buys animals for his private menagerie. the biopic offers innocence as a recurring motif.. It wants you to accept the saintly packaging—“They’re not my pets. they’re my friends”—as a character thesis.. Then the film asks the audience to hold that thesis up next to songs like Billie Jean. leaving a deliberate gap: how could such gentleness coexist with the track’s urgent. paranoid. sexually charged tension?
That question doesn’t get answered on screen. Instead, the movie seems to rely on the viewer to reconcile the contradictions alone—an approach that may feel polite, but it also avoids the very complexity that made Jackson’s artistry culturally addictive.
What the omission costs—and why the cultural conversation matters
Biopics always choose a lens. but Michael’s lens is so narrow that it risks turning a global cultural argument into a museum display.. Misryoum thinks that’s more than an artistic misfire; it’s a missed opportunity in how contemporary audiences consume celebrity history.. Today, people don’t just want dates and milestones.. They want the friction: the ethics, the power dynamics, the creative breakthroughs, the damage claims, the aftermath.
By stepping away from the later accusations. the film also steps away from the way Jackson’s legacy changed in the public imagination.. Even viewers who approach the subject defensively—or with deep skepticism—would likely recognize the historical importance of that shift.. A biopic doesn’t need to “take sides” to treat the story seriously.. It needs to treat consequences as part of the art, not as an optional footnote.
In practice, the movie’s sanitisation flattens the very energy that could have made it compelling cinema.. Without dramatic stakes, the film becomes a sequence of polite acknowledgements and tidy emotional beats.. Innovation becomes montage rather than mood, and controversy becomes a blank space.. And when a movie about one of the most influential popular artists in modern history feels like a daytime TV movie. the failure isn’t subtle.
Misryoum’s editorial takeaway is clear: Michael may be reverent by design. but the craft can’t fully compensate for what it refuses to dramatise.. The result is a film that doesn’t challenge the audience. doesn’t fully illuminate the icon. and doesn’t capture the creative storm that made Jackson’s work resonate long after the headlines—whether you came for the music. the mythology. or the questions that never really stopped.
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