Santikos Cine-opsis

Early on in “Michael Jackson’s ‘This Is It,” a single line fades on and off the screen. “For the fans,” it says simply.  That’s what longtime Jackson sidekick and “This Is It” director Kenny Ortega would like the audience to believe… that this candid concert rehearsal tape made public is a chance for fans to get one last behind-the-scenes look at their beloved pop king in action.  But it’s clear that Ortega and the editors who cobbled the interviews and footage together wanted to help him be remembered by the fans as a performer instead of a tabloid tragedy.

However, what ends up resonating through the film even more than an appreciation for his talent or sadness at his passing is the anger that comes from the revelation that Michael Jackson’s death was not only entirely preventable and stupid, but that his untreated addictions and lack of self-control (or proper interventional medical care) off the stage ultimately crushed the dreams of the hundreds of co-workers he proclaimed to love who sacrificed so hard to make his swan song successful.

After the dedication, the opening frames of “This Is It” are not of Jackson announcing his comeback tour or of the King of Pop honing his moonwalk, but instead a series of testimonials from his backup dancers as they tearily announce how excited they are about performing with their idol.  We are taken through their audition process and shown the elation they feel when they are announced as the select few who get to be the “This Is It” dancers.

As the film progresses, they become a sort of peanut gallery, cheering Jackson on during he solo numbers and joking around with him during rehearsals.  Since we as an audience cannot hope to identify with Jackson, we identify with them.  That makes these scenes tough to watch as we know that their hard work will be in vain (other than the screen time they get in the postmortem documentary, of course).

The same sadness creeps in during scenes where the cast is re-shooting the beginning of “Thriller,” when directors are superimposing Jackson into a Bogart film for “Smooth Criminal,” and when his costume director is talking about sticking LED lights under sequins to light up his suit for “Billy Jean.”  This is not the fault of Ortega, and to his credit, he adds these scenes even though they provoke sadness instead of sentiment.  But it is a little disingenuous to then dedicate the film “to the fans” when the fans only care about the headliner and not how much effort backup dancer #7 put into his “worm” practices.

Not that fans won’t get their money’s worth.  There’s plenty of Michael to go around.  But even though we see his excitement about the coming tour and marvel that he’s this riveting a performer even when he’s just going through the motions, he IS, in fact, just going through the motions.  Jackson died before the final final dress rehearsals, so there’s no real concert here.  And while we see him making changes to the blocking and tinkering with the songs, there’s no real footage of Jackson when he’s not in business mode.  We don’t see the show at it’s best, or Jackson’s performance at it’s finest, or the real “behind the scenes” authenticity that documentarians require.

However, that didn’t stop me from getting goose-bumps during “Thriller,” and I’m not even a Michael Jackson fan.

But it was still “Thriller” at 60%, and that coupled with about 2 hours of footage of Jackson’s backup band busting their asses while he “conserves his throat” makes me  feel the anger they all must have felt when they got the news that their idol was dead and their dream tour was canceled.  Even though the movie ends before we get to that point, I saw enough to know that’s how they must have felt.

And even though the movie doesn’t really show Michael at home, I saw enough to know that nobody ever said no to him.  There’s a very telling scene where the director cut a couple of measures out of the end of one of the songs, and Michael chides the band for not playing it.  When the director says he told them to cut it, Jackson says it needs to “sizzle,” and sure enough, back in it goes.  Sure, it’s just a little scene, but the quiet potency of his celebrity status is evident throughout the film.  It’s easy to imagine Jackson telling his doctor how much pain medicine he needed, and the doctor signing off on that, knowing full well that if he didn’t, Jackson would just find someone who would and pay that guy gobs of money instead (although that’s not to say that the doctor isn’t ultimately responsible for giving Jackson the drugs that killed him, but since I’m a freaking movie critic and not a judge, I don’t really think that’s my call to make).  Again, I make these assumptions from “This Is It” even though they clearly weren’t the intention of the folks who edited the film, and more than likely are directly juxtaposed to whatever they wanted me to get out of it.

That’s because “This Is It” was made by those who were too close to Michael Jackson, and identified with him, not the backup dancers or light technicians or professional musicians or giant-animatronic-Black-Widow-Spider-makers who idolized him.  Even though most of them started out as fans and thus qualify for the dedication in a roundabout way, they became professionals in Michael Jackson’s industry with the hope that one day they could work next to him in front of thousands of fans.  And they just lost their dream jobs because the guy who was running the show never got the help he needed and died before realizing his dream, and therefore the dreams of all who worked with him.  “This Is It” can hide behind its “for the fans” platitudes all it wants, but this movie is clearly not for them.  It’s an apology from the producers of the tour to the people who worked so hard to make it a success, only to have that success disappear in front of them.

To those who argue that this movie is a shallow attempt to make a buck off of the sentimentality of Michael Jackson fans following his untimely death, my reply is a resounding “SO WHAT!!”  The people in that movie deserve to get paid.  And with a $20 million estimated worldwide gross on opening day, it looks like they will.  So go see “This Is It,” and help support your friendly neighborhood backup dancers.  They’ve earned it.