Heading over to catch the new King of Pop biopic, Michael, we are prone to have a skeptical attitude, similar to watching the film Melania, another highly public figure hitting the big screen this year. A pesky question dogs us: How much truth-telling are we in for?
In both cases, the answer is “not much.” Melania was a trumped-up vanity piece of agitprop, Michael is an often musically inspiring portrait of the artist, but which unforgivably avoids any mention of his (alleged, let’s say, for legality’s sake) pedophile escapades and dark side.
As this film reminds us, Jackson was fond of bringing unusual pets into the house, including his chimp Bubbles, a llama, and an actual giraffe, right there on the Jackson compound in Encino. But there is also a major elephant in the room of this insider job and puff piece-ish biopic.