Movie Review - Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009)

Starring Michael Jackson (or a corpse/zombie pretending to be him)
Directed by Kenny Ortega

I'm certainly not a big Michael Jackson fan. Sure, I appreciate "Thriller" and "Black or White" and "Scream," but I'm not praising the guy as the be-all-end-all in the annals of musical history.

And this film, culled from rehearsal footage from Mr. Jackson's final concert that was prepping before his death, doesn't do a thing to change that. In fact, if anything, it makes me appreciate him less, simply because he should have had the brains enough to realize that he wasn't even close to being up to the task of putting on this concert.

He looks awful here...frighteningly so. He sounds awful, he dances awful, everything is awful.

What's the point of this film exactly? We're not seeing Jackson at his best -- he fully admits that he's "not singing out" in order to save his voice (although I wonder if it's simply that he had no voice to begin with at this stage in his life). His famous dance moves are reduced to geriatric foot dragging. So, why do the fans really want to see this? He looks like he's falling apart. Is this how you want to remember him?

Admittedly, it's kind of tough to rate this, but in the end, the film never needed to be made/released and, in its current form, it's a complete snoozefest to sit through. Sure, the King of Pop may have written a few good tunes in his time, but they certainly weren't showcased in any way you'd want to remember them here.

The RyMickey Rating: F