Review: Michael Jackson’s This Is It
October 29, 2009 by admin
Filed under Movie News
Michael Jackson
Review in a Hurry: The legions of fans who have bought their tickets to experience Michael Jackson’s last performance need only know that thankfully, This Is It is just that.
The Bigger Picture: Two very distinct title cards open the much talked about This Is It. The first is a simple statement informing audiences that from March through June 2009, Michael Jackson had a crew shoot his tour rehearsals for his sold out London extravaganza. In very small print, the title This is It.
The second title card is a grand and colorful marquee, the words This Is It bursting off the screen. Most likely, had Michael lived long enough to complete his comeback, only the bold and bright marquee would have made final cut.
That’s the genius and the sadness of the entire film.
By now it’s well known director Kenny Ortega (High School Musical) was brought on as a creative collaborator for the live show. But in the wake of the singer’s death, Ortega was asked to weave a concert-that-never-was out more than 100 hours of film. And in a mere four months.
That any of the scenes make any sense at all is commendable, but let’s be honest, This is It was always gonna be much more than a mere film to be assessed by standard critical observations.
For many fans across the world, 2009 is the year the biggest star on the planet died. And while millions watched the memorial on television, This Is It feels like the proper (and more off-the-wall) way to be blown away by Jackson’s unforgettable moves and incredible voice—and to finally say goodbye.
We get all of that, and it’s riveting, but there are small moments Ortega includes that highlight the pop star in a way he never would have. Seeing Jackson chide a musician for not being funky enough is funny—OK, extremely funny—but it also reveals his human nature. And—shocker!—his insistence on total control over the production.
So the elephant in the room is that, while Jackson at 50 years old still seemed unparalleled onstage, the only way audiences could reconnect with him is to put some of his brilliance (and the Wacko Jacko stuff) aside, and allow the more exacting and refreshingly funny side of Jackson to be revealed. Had Jackson lived, we never would have seen those moments.
Throughout the running time we’re treated many of the classics, but “Smooth Criminal,” “Billie Jean” and “Human Nature” are the standouts.
While some of the footage is in HD, a portion of it was shot in standard definition. The mixing of media only heightens how striking the singer was. No matter the format, even in low-res video, you can’t take your eyes off him. He truly seems like a force of nature with every signature move—and some new ones!
During a rehearsal of “Billie Jean,” with M.J. alone onstage, the backup dancers are giddily watching him offstage, cheering him on. We get a few glimpses into the lives of this small band of performers—for them the chance to work with Michael was all they ever wanted. And for once, there are no cynical double takes. Like those dancers and musicians, the entire experience of This Is It is genuine. That’s something many of us haven’t felt with Jackson in far too long.
Breathe a sigh of relief, this finally is it.
The 180—a Second Opinion: There are some less-than-stellar moments. “Earth Song,” for example, uses Michael’s voiceover to emphasize his environmental concerns while a bulldozer threatens to eat him. Well-intentioned? Yes, but then crossing the line into schmaltz.
Source: uk.eonline. com
Review 2: Michael Jackson’s This Is It
When Michael Jackson died in June at the age of 50, he was only about two weeks away from beginning his sold out, 50-show concert series in London—a big comeback after not touring for more than a decade. From rehearsal footage of the massive, theatrical spectacle, dubbed “Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” and with permission from Jackson’s estate, director Kenny Ortega cut together this concert film—along with some unnecessary interviews with Jackson’s dancers and band about how incredible the artist was.
The buzz: In theaters for only two weeks, “This Is It” can either be seen as a treat for fans who want to see Jackson live or a quick, cheap way of earning money from a product Jackson never really intended to be public in the first place. (The rehearsal footage was meant for him and possibly to be used in the stage show, but certainly not in the way it’s presented in “This Is It.”) Even if it’s both, would that stop you from seeing it?
The verdict: Jackson, a relentless perfectionist, frequently responds to mistakes with “That’s why we have rehearsal,” suggesting he may not have wanted fans to see raw footage in which he works to protect his voice and his energy. Yet even these trial performances are a wonder to behold. Jackson sure doesn’t move like he’s 50 (seriously, his heels must have propellers in them), and his presence and conviction during hits like “The Way You Make Me Feel” and “I Want You Back” put nearly every other performer to shame. “This Is It” proves that no one can pull off glittery pants (or orange ones) like Jackson and, more importantly, that no one will ever fill his shoes.
Did you know? A choreographer notes that for dancers to be hired for Jackson’s show they need to have ooze coming out of them. She has only herself to blame when radioactive cartoon monsters show up to her next open call in tights.
Review 3: Michael Jackson’s This Is It
Michael Jackson always said that he wished he could live on stage, and in Michael Jackson’s This Is It, there isn’t a moment when he looks less than comfortably and pleasurably at home there. On the vast, half-empty, often darkened proscenium of the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where we see him in bare-bones videotaped rehearsals for the 50 London concerts that he never lived to perform, Jackson moves lightly and easily, with his herky-jerky demon-marionette grace. On the rare occasions when he’s not focused on dance moves and has nothing to do but sing, as in a soaring interlude of ”Human Nature” or a version of ”I Want You Back” that he tosses off with affection for his child-superstar pluck, the music pours out of him like sunlight.
This Is It is not in any way ghoulish. It has now been established that when Jackson died, he was, physically speaking, a relatively healthy man. And so we’re spared the macabre spectacle of combing the movie for any literal signs that he was knocking at death’s door. It should also be said, though, that in This Is It, Jackson shows no telltale signs of a broken spirit, either. From the moment he takes the stage, he’s loose, robust, and in control. Maybe a little too in control. In the relative privacy of these rehearsal sessions, which took place from March of this year until his death on June 25, Jackson comes off as his friends have often described him — as a gentle, sweet, but very shrewd soul who was also a painful perfectionist. Coaching his keyboardist and musical director, Michael Bearden, on how to play ”The Way You Make Me Feel” with the exact right syncopated pull, Jackson says that he wants the song to sound ”like you’re dragging yourself out of bed,” but Bearden can’t seem to get it. Though they banter a bit about the word ”booty,” we get a hint of what a frosty taskmaster Jackson could be. When he’s displeased, it stings.
As the last set of images we’ll ever have of Michael Jackson, This Is It offers a raw and endearing sketch of a genius at work. The movie was directed, by Kenny Ortega, with enough liveliness to make up for its home-movie scruffiness, and I had a good time reveling in what amounts to a soft-edged vérité scrapbook for Michael-maniacs. By the end, though, This Is It feels like the half-complete experience that it is — a mere diagram of the excitement that Michael, for his comeback, had planned to unleash upon the world.
It’s clear from the movie that the London concerts were conceived as a very grand series of onstage music videos, each with a huge, intricate set that at times involved digital projections, and each choreographed as a disco-inferno Broadway showstopper. (”Thriller,” one of the few songs we watch as it was meant to be, had a full earth-packed graveyard.) The dancers were going to pop out from beneath the stage and crawl over skyscrapers, as Michael shimmied and boogied and got lifted into the air. Watching this without most of the sets, with the gears and pulleys still showing, and from two functional camera angles in front of the stage, we get the flavor of the songs but not the majesty.
And that’s not just due to the lack of trappings. Jackson, it’s clear, held back in rehearsal. In This Is It, he’s singing and dancing, but he’s also watching himself sing and dance, stepping out of his performance. What’s missing — what the film gives you only a tantalizing glimpse of — is his ferocity. When he does a tamped-down version of his solo whirligig in ”Billie Jean,” playing air guitar on his crotch (a gesture that elicits a round of cheers from the dancers in the Staples Center), you feel him sketching in the heat without quite committing himself. ”At least we get a feel of it,” he says.
This Is It is fun, but it’s a slightly airless experience. If the movie allows you to bask in Michael Jackson’s aura, it also uses his image to foster ”nostalgia” for a concert epiphany that never quite was. Maybe it was Michael’s destiny to leave us all wanting more. Would those concerts have returned him to his magical pedestal? We’ll never know the answer, of course. But watching this movie, at least we get a feel of it.
Source: ew. com
Review 4: Michael Jackson’s This Is It
“This Is it,” Michael Jackson told his fans in London, announcing his forthcoming concert tour. “This is the final curtain call.” The curtain fell sooner than expected. What is left is this extraordinary documentary, nothing at all like what I was expecting to see. Here is not a sick and drugged man forcing himself through grueling rehearsals, but a spirit embodied by music. Michael Jackson was something else.
The film has been assembled from rehearsals from April through June 2009 for a concert tour scheduled for this summer. The footage was “captured by a few cameras,” an opening screen tells us, but they were professional high-def cameras and the sound track is full-range stereo. The result is one of the most revealing music documentaries I’ve seen.
And it’s more than that. It’s a portrait of Michael Jackson that belies all the rumors that he would have been too weak to tour. That shows not the slightest trace of a spoiled prima donna. That benefits from the limited number of cameras by allowing us to experience his work in something closer to realistic time, instead of fracturing it into quick cuts. That provides both a good idea of what the final concert would have looked like, and a portrait of the artist at work.
Never raising his voice, never showing anger, always soft-spoken and courteous to his cast and crew, Michael with his director, Kenny Ortega, micro-manages the production. He corrects timing, refines cues, talks about details of music and dance. Seeing him always from a distance, I thought of him as the instrument of his producing operation. Here we see that he was the auteur of his shows.
We know now that Michael was subjected to a cocktail of drugs in the time leading up to his fatal overdose, including the last straw, a drug so dangerous it should only be administered by an anesthesiologist in an operating room. That knowledge makes it hard to understand how he appears to be in superb physical condition. His choreography, built from such precise, abrupt and perfectly-timed movements, is exhausting, but he never shows a sign of tiring. His movements are so well synchronized with the other dancers on stage, who are much younger and highly-trained, that he seems one with them. This is a man in such command of his physical instrument that he makes spinning in place seem as natural as blinking his eye.
He has always been a dancer first, and then a singer. He doesn’t specialize in solos. With the exception of a sweet love ballad, his songs all incorporate four backup singers and probably supplementary tracks prerecorded by himself. It is the whole effect he has in mind.
It might have been a hell of a show. Ortega and special effects wizards coordinate pre-filmed sequences with the stage work. There’s a horror-movie sequence with ghouls rising from a cemetery (and ghosts that were planned to fly above the audience). Michael is inserted into scenes from Rita Hayworth and Humphrey Bogart movies, and through clever f/x even has a machine-gun battle with Bogie. His environmental pitch is backed by rain forest footage. He rides a cherry-picker high above the audience.
His audience in this case consists entirely of stagehands, gaffers, technicians, and so on. These are working people who have seen it all. They love him. They’re not pretending. They love him for his music, and perhaps even more for his attitude. Big stars in rehearsal are not infrequently pains in the ass. Michael plunges in with the spirit of a co-worker, prepared to do the job and go the distance.
How was that possible? Even if he had the body for it, which he obviously did, how did he muster the mental strength? When you have a doctor on duty around the clock to administer the prescription medications you desire, when your idea of a good sleep is reportedly to be unconscious for 24 hours, how do you wake up into such a state of keen alertness? Uppers? I don’t think it quite works that way. I was watching like a hawk for any hint of the effects of drug abuse, but couldn’t see any. Perhaps it’s significant that of all the people in the rehearsal space, he is the only one whose arms are covered at all times by long sleeves.
Well, we don’t know how he did it. “This Is It” is proof that he did do it. He didn’t let down his investors and colleagues. He was fully prepared for his opening night. He and Kenny Ortega, who also directed this film, were at the top of their game. There’s a moving scene on the last day of rehearsal when Jackson and Ortega join hands in a circle with all the others, and thank them. But the concert they worked so hard on was never to be.
This is it.
Source: suntimes.com
