Rating


Michael Jackson is spinning in his grave, and he isn’t grabbing his crotch while doing so.

As we all know, we lost The King of Pop last summer right before he was supposed to embark on his first world tour in a decade. The concert, directed and choreographed by Kenny Ortega (“High School Musical”), was rehearsed in Los Angeles before the tour launched in London.

“This Is It” documents those rehearsals and gives viewers a behind the scenes look.

The film starts with a text scroll that says the rehearsals were shot for Michael’s private library. It was never intended for public viewing, and it should have stayed that way.

The film constantly switches between 4:3 full screen aspect and different wide screen ratios, all with different film qualities.

This gives the movie a cool, raw innovative feel at the beginning, but it gets really annoying really fast. We see different rehearsals with different wardrobes and different moonwalk-less choreography while hits play. Since the songs use only one audio track, it is really hard to determine if what you are seeing lines up with what you are hearing.

What you are hearing isn’t that great. The band is remarkable and putting their all into it, and so are the backup singers.

The thing is that Michael Jackson isn’t. It was depressing watching him mumble through parts of “Beat It” and forgetting the words to “Billie Jean.” This is in no way Michael Jackson’s vault.
These were rehearsals that were never meant to be seen and he constantly reminds the crew that he has to conserve his throat for the actual tour.

At one point, he get upset with himself for letting loose at practice and singing alto.

This show was going to be huge. Test animations of the moving set design and the glimpses of multimedia footage shot exclusively for the tour (including an all new “Thriller” video) prove this to be true.

Michael constantly pushed the envelope with his live performances and wanted to be bigger and better than anything that anyone has ever done.

“This Is It” definitely did not do that. Why? Because it wasn’t the final product. I felt dirty as a fan and as a musician sitting in the theater watching this movie.

This is how we say goodbye to the King of Pop? By forking over 10 bucks for a movie ticket that is usually $6.50? By making sure everyone going into the theater gets handed an ad for a

Michael Jackson commemorative half-dollar?

By watching a legend knowing for giving his best run through his songs haphazardly in a dress rehearsal meant only for his personal viewing?

Michael would be ashamed.

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