In ‘This Is It,’ the King of Pop lives on

October 29, 2009|Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

The announcement earlier this year that Michael Jackson would be doing 50 concerts in London was greeted with equal parts euphoria and cynicism. Was he doing it for us? Was he doing it for money? Then in June, less than a month before the start of the sold-out run, Jackson died of cardiac arrest, and the news that a film of the show’s rehearsal footage was on the way added another layer of ambivalence. Awesome. Creepy. But, for now, “Michael Jackson’s This Is It’’ is the fierce last word on the matter. Jackson had no apparent plans to phone, fax, text, or IM it in.

The movie still arrives, screened for critics only hours before opening, with an eerie taint. It comes days before Halloween; its star, while far from death at the time, a diminished version of his electrifying self, his face a wan mask. Next weekend, that popular chiller about the couple in the haunted house won’t be the only paranormal activity at the box office. Yet watching Jackson pop, lock, rock, writhe, thrust, and clutch his crotch, even at 50 percent, leaves a feeling of woe: This show really would have been major.

Over the summer news outlets ran some of the footage - or footage very much like it. For a movie audience, the question is whether an hour and a half of the same will be any fun, especially when so much of it is barely camera-phone quality. The opening minutes seem doubtful. Jackson chops, poses, and slides through “Wanna Be Startin' Something.’’ He doesn’t commit to any sort of vocal styling. And you can see him thinking about how to work the song out.

Watching a great artist decide how to move doesn’t seem much more exciting than watching a waiter set a table: When’s dinner? That, of course, is the terrible punch line of this entire experience: This is it. So, instead, we devour even Jackson’s lassitude. It’s our last supper. (Besides, what waiter is going to serve you wearing a tuxedo jacket with one sequined lapel and shoulders that look like something from a Tim Burton movie?)