♬♪😇 There's No Such Thing as an Honest Music Biopic

Editorial Note: Welcome to Den of Geek’s new movies newsletter, Absolute Cinema. We hope you find this weekly insight into the cinema scene—which will comment and report on the news of the day, as well as keep a weather eye on the greater horizon—a haven for movie buffs, cinephiles, and film nerds everywhere.

Can an Officially Sanctioned Musical Biopic Ever Be Honest? (And Do We Care?)

One of the amusing quirks of film criticism is that every couple of years, movie reviewers en masse get to trot out their goofy-kid credentials and remind readers that, yes, we can and have enjoyed a raunchy, lowbrow comedy where more than one character dies in a freak machete fight accident. It’s called Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and it’s just as hilarious nearly 20 years later with its pitch-perfect spoofing of the musical biopic.

That Jake Kasdan-directed cult classic remains a movie nerd darling for how, scene by scene, and musical montage by decades-spanning musical montage, it mocks and brutalizes the genre of Walk the Line and Ray, or these days, Bohemian Rhapsody and A Complete Unknown. And every time another one of these “behind the music” baubles comes around, critics are quick to ponder, “Why do they still use this formula that Dewey Cox so obliterated way back when?”

Well… the answer is because Walk Hard was a flop, and audiences never really cared whether Elvis got into the headspace of a guy who was so obsessed with teenage virginity that he married one after meeting her at age 14. Really, who wants to dwell on that when “Suspicious Minds” slaps like that?! (Same reason that Baz Luhrmann’s “King of Rock” biopic made a lot more peanut butter and cheddar than Sofia Coppola’s aloof Priscilla.)

This irony is on my mind again this week with the release of another musical biopic, this time about another musicdom monarch, the King of Pop himself, Mr. Michael Jackson. Den of Geek’s own Joe George is not wrong when he notes in his review, “Michael’s deification of its subject makes it hard to enjoy the film as anything other than a work of devotional art or camp of the highest level.”

But I suspect for most audiences, that’ll be just dandy. Michael is no more interested in the interior life of MJ than it is about those pesky allegations. Hell, it ends in 1988, about a half-decade before the first heinous accusations became a matter of public record. Granted, this is due to apparently the entire third act of the film being rethought, reshot, and maybe finally cut after the filmmakers belatedly learned they did not have the legal right to dramatize the life of one of Jackson’s accusers. (The movie in theaters is two hours, but an earlier cut reportedly ran closer to four.)

Yet that accidentally could have resulted in a slightly better picture since Michael became in post-production exclusively about a power struggle between an innocent, childlike genius and his domineering father Joseph. That’s more structure than BoRap ever had. And Colman Domingo, as always, is delicious as that papa, even if it’s just chewing scenery here, and Jaafar Jackson, the real-life nephew of MJ, is an absolute deadringer for his uncle’s public persona, vibe, and even earth-shattering dance moves.

At the end of the day, that’s what audiences want out of a musical biopic: a dance party and killer tribute act. The music is electric, the choreography still jaw-dropping, and the truth… heh, let’s just say more obfuscated than normal. After all, this is a biopic that omits the fact Michael had a sister named Janet (the second most famous Jackson wouldn’t give the filmmakers the rights to her life) and casts Miles Teller in a throwaway part as a Mr. Nice Guy manager (who, by the by, in real life is a co-executor of MJ’s estate).

If getting the rights to a musician’s hit songs often causes these movies to smooth out rough edges for all living, vested parties, then Michael takes place on a pancake. But hey, that flatness is great for the moon walk, which is why we’re here in the first place.

REEL THOUGHTS

Absolute News

This week also featured our first teaser for the DC Universe’s next movie after Supergirl, the Mike Flanagan co-written and James Watkins-directed Clayface. While the first sizzle doesn’t show a whole lot, it does make a tantalizing promise: this is going to be a genuine horror movie. Admittedly, most modern superhero movie producers and studios regularly promise their efforts take place at a crossroads with other genres—a spy thriller, a “Game of Thrones” style fantasy, a war movie—but more often, they land on the superhero genre’s side of the street. So if DCU co-head James Gunn can really inject the diversity of tone we find in comics into the larger cinema landscape, he could add years to capes and cowls’ lifespan.

Absolute Recommends

Also in theaters this weekend is the much lower-budgeted, and far less marketed, Over Your Dead Body, a new pitch black comedy from director and co-writer Jorma Taccone (one third of the Lonely Island). If you liked MacGruber, or for that matter laugh-and-blast mash-ups like True Romance, maybe consider giving this a try. With a setup worthy of a Patricia Highsmith novel, the film stars Jason Segel in one of his usual sad sack roles as Dan, a guy who is planning this weekend to murder his wife (a phenomenal Samara Weaving, laying the Aussie accent and tics on thick here). The funny thing is that she also has plans for him during their mini-holiday by the lake. Hijinks ensue, as do a lot of bad taste jokes that still make you laugh. And maybe a few that don’t.

Absolute Throwback

Earlier this month quietly marked the 35th anniversary of The Howling, the other amazing werewolf movie that came out in 1981. Overshadowed in its heyday by An American Werewolf in London, the lycanthrope flick that Rick Baker won the first annual Makeup and Hairstyling Design Oscar for, The Howling originally had Baker attached as well. However, he was allowed to bow out by director Joe Dante due to an obligation Baker made to American Werewolf’s John Landis many years earlier. So Baker’s protege Rob Bottin stepped up to lead the design of the werewolves in this classic. And honestly? Second best werewolf transformation in cinema history, and in a movie that walks the line between what became Dante’s signature sense of oblique humor and a seedy tone still stuck in 1970s sleaze and despair.

FROM OUR PARTNERS AT HEYWA

When did searching turn into an endless scroll?

Is your social feed non-stop cat videos and AI fruit?

If you’re looking for more knowledge and less slop, you need heywa.

It actually rewards your curiosity. Ask it a question about Stonehenge and tap through an interactive visual story. Choose-Your-Own-adventure to determine where your learning journey goes from there.

Try heywa for free

Was this forwarded to you? We’re a pop culture website that prides itself on having content produced by experts, for fans. Because we are fans!
It’s free to subscribe.