Movie review: Michael Jackson's This Is It

After Michael Jackson's tragic death back in June it was revealed that while preparing for a series of 50 concerts at London's O2 arena they had done quite a bit of filming of those preparations. This footage was either going to go into Jackson's personal archive or some of it would be used during the concerts or for something else like a concert DVD.

But after he died it was announced that this footage was going to be compiled together to be shown in theaters. So what we get from that is the documentary This Is It. Basically what we have is footage of from different stages of the rehearsals for the concerts. The movie starts off with dancers auditioning to be in the show. Anyone who has seen a Jackson show before knows that the dancers were a very key part of the show.

Once the dancer's have been chosen we get to what people really came to see and that's the performances. First I have to say that Jackson's voice sounded great. It was about as good as I have ever heard it sound and this is keeping in mind he was holding back at some points to save his voice for the actual shows. I think come time for the actual shows he would have sounded better than he had in years.

Now the dancing is where Jackson's age and physical state really show through. As a lot of people know he wasn't in very good shape and was sick all the time and was one all kinds of medications so that he could go from day to day. If you compare his dancing in this movie to how he was even 10 years ago back then he was a lot more agile and was able to move around a lot more.

The choice of the songs that they put in the movie was done really well. The only real issues I have is they left out Bad and Heal the World. I can forgive Heal the World not being there but Bad is kind of a staple for Jackson. My guess is they had footage of it but it found itself on the cutting room floor and will probably be among the extras on the DVD.

Some of the songs came complete with big production numbers with tons of dancers and set pieces. Also at the top of the stage was a large video wall and they had produced several green screen sequences to go with songs like Smooth Criminal, They Don't Care About Us and Thriller. The one for Thriller was even done in 3D so I believe the plan was to pass out 3D glasses to everyone in the crowd.

But probably the coolest thing is some of the set pieces that weren't done yet. It was planned for the beginning of the show for this figure shaped like a man to come out. It would be covered all over with video screens and would open piece by piece to reveal Jackson at the beginning of the show. Then during the song Earth Song at one point a big bulldozer was supposed to drive up behind Jackson and stop a few feet from him. They had also rigged up a cherry picker into the stage so during the show he could be lifted up above the audience.

I believe from what we see from all the different parts of the concert that this would probably have been one of the best concerts of this decade if not one of the best of the last 20 years or so. It is unfortunate that Jackson died before he ever had a chance to make the dream a reality.

Some people are protesting this movie saying that this movie puts Jackson up on a pedestal and makes him out to be some kind of prophet or God. If you actually watch the movie you'll see that neither of these are true. Most of the movie is either him performing or other people working on different parts of the show all of which is intermixed with interviews with musicians, dancers and several other people. All this movie does show is how much of a showman and how much of a perfectionist Jackson was. He knew this was his comeback to the stage and probably his last chance to perform for the fans so he was going to make the most of it.

They could have used this movie to show glimpses into his life at the time and his past but the director decided it was best to just edit together the concert footage and mix it in with a little bit of older footage. But that footage was only used to back up one of the songs.

One thing I should say is that the movie was shot, for the most part, using high definition cameras. However there are some sections that seemed to be filmed with a lower definition camera that isn't in full HD. So whenever one of these sections comes up the image on the screen shrinks down in size and you get this box in the middle of the screen that's at a lower resolution. Then it will switch back and forth between the HD and the standard and at times it's a bit jarring. This isn't enough to distract you from the movie but I wish something had been done to correct this.

I would really only recommend this movie if you are a fan of Michael Jackson's music or performances. If you aren't a fan of Jackson then you really should avoid this movie at least while it's in theaters. Now it originally was only supposed to run in theaters for 2 weeks but due to how well it did on it's opening weekend they have decided to extend it beyond that.

If you are a fan of Jackson then you have either already seen this movie or plan to see it at some point in the future. But keep in mind what you get is a concert film plain and simple. This isn't a biographical look at his life or his legacy it's just your chance to see how he was preparing for his concerts. So what you see is him doing what he did best, entertaining his fans.

My score: 8.0/10