Make no mistake about it: “Michael” isn’t a movie. It’s a filmed playlist in search of a story. “Michael,” the first half of the Cliff Notes of the singer’s life, features the Jackson siblings (Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon, La Toya, and the deceased) as executive producers. In every cloying moment, you can notice their fingerprints all over this plastic jukebox picture. “Michael” has already caused many to question what’s missing: Janet Jackson (who indeed doesn’t exist in this “universe”) and any reference to the singer’s legal troubles. But the absence of those elements isn’t what breaks this insipid biopic. It’s the lack of any complex interest in Michael himself.

Built on a stringent chronological storytelling that makes choppy recreations inevitable, “Michael,” which spans from 1966 to 1988, possesses only one redeeming quality: the King of Pop’s music. The director wastes little time deploying this precious asset, snapping viewers away from the film’s opening images of the black-clad singer awaiting a chanting audience back to Michael’s humble beginnings in Gary, Indiana. Michael (an adorable Juliano Krue Valdi portrays the young artist) and his older brothers are in their living room practicing harmonies under the watchful eye of their demanding father Joe (Colman Domingo). Contrary to his dogmatic dad’s orders to look him in the eye, the shy Michael cannot face his father. Michael’s supportive but timid mother, Katherine (Nia Long), never lifts a finger or raises her voice against her husband either, despite witnessing his abusive treatment of their youngest child. That tenuous family dynamic becomes Michael’s biggest hurdle to becoming a true artist in John Logan’s script.

This repetitive biopic is afraid to navigate the singer’s anxieties, traumas, and frustrations, and its flat characterisations prevent it from interrogating Michael as a creator or person. “Michael” leaps from one event to the next without reflection or pause, hastily attempting to summarise an accepted mythology of the singer’s unlikely rise to stardom in a surprisingly tight 127-minute runtime. 

The director seems to care little about quality control. Within the film’s first 20 minutes, we zip from 1966 (when the Jacksons first began touring) to Motown’s discovery of them in 1968 at a show at Chicago’s Regal Theater, and into their early recordings with the seminal label in 1969. The director doesn’t stop to let viewers consider the fraught implications of Joe sending his young sons to work in an adult club, or how Michael was often singing about sexualised themes that were beyond his age. 

The breakneck pace belies what must’ve been the director’s initial intent, which was probably sliced away in the edit. Clearly, he wants to draw connections between the singer’s permanent childlike state and the mature sights he witnessed far too soon.

True to its title, “Michael” doesn’t make much space for its other characters either. The singer’s brothers are glorified extras. We don’t learn which brother Michael was closest with, which he fought with the most, or who he laughed and cried with the most. And while one could argue the biopic is about the singer, not his brothers, isn’t your relationship with your siblings a reflection of who you are? “Michael” isn’t interested in those human details. It has nothing original to say about him or those around him that can’t be found elsewhere. 

As a result of that, Domingo gives the worst, most caricatured performance of his career. He’s not playing a real person. The talented actor is relegated to portraying a boogeyman. These underwhelming characterisations undermine the potential emotional impact Michael’s arrested development should have

Jaafar Jackson, Jermaine’s son, offers a few momentary glimpses into his uncle’s soul. But there’s little else he can accomplish with the hagiographic material, which can’t help but make viewers aware that Michael was kind and charitable toward children.

Michael is only portrayed as a victim here. Which isn’t to say the singer didn’t endure truly horrific events – from his father’s abuse to the Pepsi incident, which is depicted in the film – rather, he possesses no flaws, personal opinions, or definable traits.