While it may not be the definitive concert film (or the insightful backstage look) some will hope for, Michael Jackson's This Is It packs more than enough entertainment value to live up to its ambitious title.
While it may not be the definitive concert film (or the insightful backstage look) some will hope for, Michael Jackson's This Is It packs more than enough entertainment value to live up to its ambitious title.
"Michael Jackson's This Is It" will offer Jackson fans and music lovers worldwide a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the performer as he developed, created and rehearsed for his sold-out concerts that would have taken place beginning this summer in London's O2 Arena. Chronicling the months from March through June, 2009, the film is produced with the full support of the Estate of Michael Jackson and drawn from more than one hundred hours of behind-the-scenes footage, featuring Jackson rehearsing a
number of his songs for the show. Audiences will be given a privileged and private look at Jackson as he has never been seen before. In raw and candid detail, "Michael Jackson's This Is It" captures the singer, dancer, filmmaker, architect, creative genius, and great artist at work as he creates and perfects his final show.
The Michael Jackson we see here is not a self-styled Messiah or a tabloid oddity. He is, instead, what he always was underneath it all: a talented musician, a brilliant dancer, and one of the most gifted entertainers of his time.
It's an expertly packaged -- brilliantly packaged, considering how quickly the job was done -- phantasmagoria that emphasizes, quite convincingly, the energy that Michael could still draw from whatever was fueling his wraith-thin body.
Perhaps the best way to approach it -- at least for those who are not total Jackson fans -- is to view it as an often-fascinating document on how the sausage (or magic, if you will) is made for a mega-concert tour.
Sometimes he loses his voice and sometimes he even loses his temper. The film never shows us whether or not Michael Jackson had lost his mind. But it does show us that he never lost his talent.
If you've got the slightest interest in Jackson's music, then this is the movie for you. If you want to learn the truth about the icon, then you're looking at the wrong film.
This Is It works, on a very simple level, because you get to see Jackson -- stripped free from his garish, almost willfully bizarre public persona -- doing what he truly loves, and almost inarguably was born to do.
Not a ghoulish take-the-money-and-run rip-off, but a surprisingly sweet, sensitive, tenderhearted swan song you will never forget that will have you shedding a tear while tapping your feet.
This Is It gives us enough to see that this concert series was going to be the kind of show you tell your grandkids about, full of incredible dancing and innovative staging and energetic wowness. The missing elements serve to feature the star who has fal
A piecemeal attempt at putting a bow on Michael Jackson's overblown and bankrupt career, this clinical behind-the-scenes collage of the rehearsal process for MJ's doomed London performance schedule is more propaganda than documentary.
After Michael Jackson's death i was addicted to knowing more about him and now he's my favorite singer, and when this movie was released in theaters, literally, everyone in my family went to go see it, and it blew all of us away, each and every music rendition Michael did from his hit songs (yet for some reason they
didn't have bad, speed demon, will you be there, or black or white.) R.I.P. Michael Jackson we all miss you, your family, my family, everyone misses you, you were a true change to this world
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