This Is It = This Is Shit

I just saw the re-release of This Is It yesterday. I guess they couldn’t get enough money from the first release in the Japanese theatres — which I now know why — and the producers got desperate.

First, I’ll set the record straight. I like the early music of Michael Jackson. The songs are catchy and share a good beat. As for the man himself, however, I don’t really have much of an opinion. All I know is he can dance and he can sign like many artists can just dream to do. He may have sounded like a megalomaniac sometimes, but I’m sure he meant well.

I didn’t know what to expect since I had no idea This Is It was supposed to be the name of the tour. Having managed to release a postmortem flick about the “King of Pop” so quickly baffled me at first. However, after watching that poor excuse of a movie, I understood everything.

It was certainly nice to see MJ back on the stage again after his long troubled time. A real pop flashback from the 80’s for the modern days. But really, if a famous signer dies during the preparation of his long-awaited stage comeback, it doesn’t mean that you should just take the bits some cameramen filmed during its making and just slap it together into a shitty movie with sprinkles of cheesy CG animations of what the concert would have been.

It feels like the people practice on stage and everyone else working around Michael were part of a big family, and the film felt like a feel-good family movie that should have just went straight for home release. Watching him dancing and signing his old hits like Billy Jean and Beat It was nice, but I felt the song quality from the original 80’s music videos were better. Maybe it would have been better to be there in person.

This is not a biography nor a documentary. It’s a typical concert movie that you would find in music shops, and I’m sure while you can’t find a better pop-star, you’ll find a better movie. There was no narration, really little background story, and no details whatsoever about the last days of Michael. The film went on and on for too long, and I was tricked into thinking several times that it reached a conclusion, but no, there were always more “surprises,” even after the credits.

They forgot the “sh” in front of the third word in the title. Maybe this waste was made to make Michael spin in his own grave and do a last Thriller, or a sad attempt to recoup all the money lost from the tour that never came to be. It’s a reward to all the hardcore fans. Still, to people like me who just enjoy its music a little bit, it’s a pile of steaming feces smeared in the face, and I wouldn’t even bother watching the release on DVD or Blu-ray which is coming out at the end of the month. James Rolfe did a better job.

1/5