Damita Jo Fan
New member
06/08/2004
"I've got a bad feeling about this," says Michael Jackson, as portrayed in "Man in the Mirror," VH1's trippy take on the Gloved One and his many loved ones. At this turning point in the Jackson family saga, the pop star is about to shimmy among indoor fireworks for a Pepsi commercial shoot. The ill-staged explosives leave him badly burned.
The King of Pop has just warned his autocratic dad that the endorsement deal was ill advised. "You can't buy publicity like this, Michael," the patriarch, Joe Jackson, had explained.
"No, publicity like this buys you," the moonwalking prophet replied. And that's the real point of the superstar's story, with this sad corollary: his career's demise is as much a media commodity as its rise. When Mr. Jackson was selling 25 million copies (in the United States) of his "Thriller" album, television outlets could not broadcast enough of his hip-cocking moves. Now that his later releases have flopped and vice detectives are on his case, networks rush to the airwaves with such schlocky peeks inside the gates of Neverland.
Tonight's biopic flits past the milestones in this tale of American idolatry. There's the Motown heyday of the Jackson Five, with bubblegum pop stage-managed by a cruel dad. Joe Jackson sternly keeps his youngest son tethered to his less talented brothers. "You one of the Jacksons, you ain't all the Jacksons!," Joe says, raging further that Michael needs to "get through your thick head and your big nose that I made this."
Thus begin the body-image woes for the youngest son. Surgeons redo the nose. He covers up splotches on his hand caused by vitiligo, a severe skin disease, with a sparkly glove, beginning a long history of hiding behind sequins. Hair stylists fashion Mr. Jackson's drippy curls of yesteryear and today's more severe je-ne-sais-coif, but face-powder overdoes the gradual skin lightening, making him a little bit Grandpa Munster and a little bit Blue Man Group.
You can see how set decorators would consider recreating Neverland a dream job, with its military-attired werewolf statuary and gilded settees. The production, however, is never quite imaginative enough, and viewers are stuck with whirling perspectives on merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels to suggest the madness. And there's the dubious, uncheckable dialogue to endure: "You understand me, don't you?" Mr. Jackson asks a koala knickknack.
If the figurine did, then that would be a start. Who knows what really goes on inside Mr. Jackson's cranium? Plenty of real-life evidence suggests that the singer doesn't understand it all himself. Unhelpfully, the filmmakers suggest a regular stream of messages from supportive divas. A silver-eye-shadowed vision of Diana Ross descends on him in bed, an even campier visitation than Prior Walter experienced in "Angels in America." She implores him thus: "Listen to me. You are going to be a big star, but there will be hurt and pain." (Two attributes that have been known to go together.) Elizabeth Taylor also pops up, in person and in reverie, and adding to the jumble, Mr. Jackson apparently receives these apparitions whether asleep or awake.
Prescription drugs supposedly play a role in Mr. Jackson's general confusion, and when his nurse drops by with refills, Mr. Jackson trusts her so much that he marries her. He also impregnates her, or supports her impregnation, or something. As a dad, he is seen as twitchy and addled, with no at-home influence over any child that doesn't involve bribes. Accused of felonious intimacies with young houseguests, he cloaks himself in his own boyish innocence about the world, protesting that he couldn't imagine such misdeeds, much less commit them.
The film suggests that Mr. Jackson did cross some line with one young friend in the early 1990's. But the child's account is murky, and the case never went to trial. The drama does nothing with the cry-for-help titles of his concert tours – "Bad" in the late 1980's and "Dangerous" in the early 90's. In the actual "Man in the Mirror" lyrics, the singer asks his reflection to change his ways, but such self-censure is unexplored. Instead, the film drums home an M. J.-as-Peter-Pan theme, as the singer rejects anyone who doesn't believe, as was necessary in the fictional Neverland. (Mr. Jackson and his sister Janet are shown calling each other Peter and Tink.)
Such pop-culture pathos can lure many an eyeball, and if VH1 wanted to distinguish itself as a creative vanguard and a truth teller, then it should have put some young visionary behind the camera. Why couldn't the network have found some successor to the director Todd Haynes, who wowed the cognoscenti in the late 1980's with "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," a tale of anorexia and denial shot only with stop-action photography and Barbie dolls?
Michael Jackson's tale is well known but not yet well told, even though Flex Alexander does an admirable job mimicking Mr. Jackson's falsetto and footwork. Other performances are harder to praise; two lead actors (Peter Onorati and Eugene Clark) struggle to enliven a pair of poorly drawn composite characters, Ziggy the lawyer and Bobby the bodyguard.
I could go on about the clichéd use (in the version I saw) of piano music from the film "American Beauty" for the sad parts and shrieking violins from another film, "Requiem for a Dream," for the frenetic ones, but VH1 didn't venture to make a work of art. "Man in the Mirror" is just an embellished update of a life that will be back in the news with next month's scheduled trial, in which he faces charges of child-molesting and conspiracy. MTV crowned Mr. Jackson the King of Pop, and now its sister network VH1 is merely staking its claim in the dethroning bonanza.
MAN IN THE MIRROR: The Michael Jackson Story
VH1, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.
Source: New York Times
"I've got a bad feeling about this," says Michael Jackson, as portrayed in "Man in the Mirror," VH1's trippy take on the Gloved One and his many loved ones. At this turning point in the Jackson family saga, the pop star is about to shimmy among indoor fireworks for a Pepsi commercial shoot. The ill-staged explosives leave him badly burned.
The King of Pop has just warned his autocratic dad that the endorsement deal was ill advised. "You can't buy publicity like this, Michael," the patriarch, Joe Jackson, had explained.
"No, publicity like this buys you," the moonwalking prophet replied. And that's the real point of the superstar's story, with this sad corollary: his career's demise is as much a media commodity as its rise. When Mr. Jackson was selling 25 million copies (in the United States) of his "Thriller" album, television outlets could not broadcast enough of his hip-cocking moves. Now that his later releases have flopped and vice detectives are on his case, networks rush to the airwaves with such schlocky peeks inside the gates of Neverland.
Tonight's biopic flits past the milestones in this tale of American idolatry. There's the Motown heyday of the Jackson Five, with bubblegum pop stage-managed by a cruel dad. Joe Jackson sternly keeps his youngest son tethered to his less talented brothers. "You one of the Jacksons, you ain't all the Jacksons!," Joe says, raging further that Michael needs to "get through your thick head and your big nose that I made this."
Thus begin the body-image woes for the youngest son. Surgeons redo the nose. He covers up splotches on his hand caused by vitiligo, a severe skin disease, with a sparkly glove, beginning a long history of hiding behind sequins. Hair stylists fashion Mr. Jackson's drippy curls of yesteryear and today's more severe je-ne-sais-coif, but face-powder overdoes the gradual skin lightening, making him a little bit Grandpa Munster and a little bit Blue Man Group.
You can see how set decorators would consider recreating Neverland a dream job, with its military-attired werewolf statuary and gilded settees. The production, however, is never quite imaginative enough, and viewers are stuck with whirling perspectives on merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels to suggest the madness. And there's the dubious, uncheckable dialogue to endure: "You understand me, don't you?" Mr. Jackson asks a koala knickknack.
If the figurine did, then that would be a start. Who knows what really goes on inside Mr. Jackson's cranium? Plenty of real-life evidence suggests that the singer doesn't understand it all himself. Unhelpfully, the filmmakers suggest a regular stream of messages from supportive divas. A silver-eye-shadowed vision of Diana Ross descends on him in bed, an even campier visitation than Prior Walter experienced in "Angels in America." She implores him thus: "Listen to me. You are going to be a big star, but there will be hurt and pain." (Two attributes that have been known to go together.) Elizabeth Taylor also pops up, in person and in reverie, and adding to the jumble, Mr. Jackson apparently receives these apparitions whether asleep or awake.
Prescription drugs supposedly play a role in Mr. Jackson's general confusion, and when his nurse drops by with refills, Mr. Jackson trusts her so much that he marries her. He also impregnates her, or supports her impregnation, or something. As a dad, he is seen as twitchy and addled, with no at-home influence over any child that doesn't involve bribes. Accused of felonious intimacies with young houseguests, he cloaks himself in his own boyish innocence about the world, protesting that he couldn't imagine such misdeeds, much less commit them.
The film suggests that Mr. Jackson did cross some line with one young friend in the early 1990's. But the child's account is murky, and the case never went to trial. The drama does nothing with the cry-for-help titles of his concert tours – "Bad" in the late 1980's and "Dangerous" in the early 90's. In the actual "Man in the Mirror" lyrics, the singer asks his reflection to change his ways, but such self-censure is unexplored. Instead, the film drums home an M. J.-as-Peter-Pan theme, as the singer rejects anyone who doesn't believe, as was necessary in the fictional Neverland. (Mr. Jackson and his sister Janet are shown calling each other Peter and Tink.)
Such pop-culture pathos can lure many an eyeball, and if VH1 wanted to distinguish itself as a creative vanguard and a truth teller, then it should have put some young visionary behind the camera. Why couldn't the network have found some successor to the director Todd Haynes, who wowed the cognoscenti in the late 1980's with "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," a tale of anorexia and denial shot only with stop-action photography and Barbie dolls?
Michael Jackson's tale is well known but not yet well told, even though Flex Alexander does an admirable job mimicking Mr. Jackson's falsetto and footwork. Other performances are harder to praise; two lead actors (Peter Onorati and Eugene Clark) struggle to enliven a pair of poorly drawn composite characters, Ziggy the lawyer and Bobby the bodyguard.
I could go on about the clichéd use (in the version I saw) of piano music from the film "American Beauty" for the sad parts and shrieking violins from another film, "Requiem for a Dream," for the frenetic ones, but VH1 didn't venture to make a work of art. "Man in the Mirror" is just an embellished update of a life that will be back in the news with next month's scheduled trial, in which he faces charges of child-molesting and conspiracy. MTV crowned Mr. Jackson the King of Pop, and now its sister network VH1 is merely staking its claim in the dethroning bonanza.
MAN IN THE MIRROR: The Michael Jackson Story
VH1, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.
Source: New York Times
