Music, dance dominate 'Michael'

     It's probably a mistake to look at Michael as a biopic that explores every facet of Michael Jackson’s life with nuance and studied objectivity. Approved by the Jackson estate and made with its participation, the movie makes no mention of the widely known child sex abuse claims against Jackson. The deconstruction of Jackson’s image began in 1993. Michael concludes in 1988, offering a terse title card at the end, “The story continues.” 

  I’ll say.

  Whatever you think about Michael Jackson, director Antoine Fuqua concentrates on something incontestable: Michael Jackson’s riveting performance skills and the connection he made and still makes with his legion of fans.

   If you think that’s insufficient, stay home. Otherwise, you’ll find a movie that can be regarded as an entertaining slice of showmanship with selective biographical footnotes. 

   Fuqua begins with 10-year-old Michael (Julian Valdi). who’s under the dictatorial sway of his father Joe Jackson, a menacing Colman Domingo. 

   From the start, it’s clear that Michael occupies his own world, separate even from the brothers who make up the increasingly popular Jackson Five. 

    Michael's relationships with his brothers get short shrift. Instead, Fuqua concentrates on Joe’s command of his sons. When Michael errs during rehearsal, Joe beats him with a belt. Mom (Nia Long) remains sympathetic to Michael, but Joe runs the show.

     A father/son conflict sets the stage for the movie’s theme: Michael struggles to gain independence, to become the master of his destiny, without rejecting his family. Michael lives at the family home throughout most of the movie,  albeit a much improved version when the newly prosperous Jacksons relocate from Gary, Indiana, to Encino, Ca.  The entire movie takes place in pre-Neverland days.

     In many ways, Michael remains a child throughout. He reads illustrated versions of Peter Pan, amasses an army of stuffed animals, and then begins collecting real ones, notably Bubbles, a chimp that becomes his friend. (It's evidently a CGI creation.) The movie seems to accept all this at face value, leaving us to decide whether there's something slightly pathetic about Michael's juvenile preoccupations.

    The movie also deals with the business side of Michael’s life: his alliances with Motown and Berry Gordy (Larenz Tate); his work with Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson), and his move toward solo performing, which culminates with the firing of his father as his manager. Michael instructs his attorney, John Branca (Miles Teller), to deliver the news. He does so by fax.

      Another glimpse of Michael’s manipulative power comes into view when he meets with the head of CBS (Mike Meyers) and threatens to persuade the label’s major white artists— Bruce Springsteen among them — to quit the label unless Michael’s creative and dazzlingly produced videos are shown on MTV, which at the time didn’t play much work by Black artists.

    Without the right Michael, the movie would have been laughable. It doesn’t take long for the movie to be placed squarely on the shoulders of Jafaar Jackson, Michael’s real-life nephew and the son of Jackson Five member, Jermaine. 

    Jafaar looks like Michael, moves like Michael, and sings with a voice that — to my untrained ears — sounds like Michael. It’s either an amazing act of mimicry or an amazing performance. Either way, Jackson's presence in the movie feels real.

     Jafaar also gives Michael an aura of innocence; he visits sick kids in cancer wards and donates big money to the burn center where he's hospitalized after a serious accident during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. Michael's relationship with his mother remains tender throughout, and he plays peacemaker when he meets with Crips and Bloods to lower antagonisms. He also uses the gang members as inspiration for the choreography in his “Beat It” video.

    Michael's battle with Joe continues to the end. The elder Jackson tries to cling to Michael’s earning power as long as possible, even concocting a deal with Don King (Deon Cole) to promote the famous “Victory Tour.” 

    At its best, the movie functions as the best imitation act you’ve ever seen. Jafaar does his own singing and the score has been cranked to maximum effect. The infectious rhythms of a showcase number such as Billie Jean prove irresistible.

    Sure, reality, or what we know of it, casts a shadow of skepticism here, and it occurred to me that the family might still be riding Michael’s coattails, but if you see Michael as a show that captures the magnetism and performance energy that underscored Michael’s ascendance, you may have to agree that the King of Pop earned his crown.

Hits and misses in an interracial romcom

   The humor in You People sometimes is broad enough to encourage a call for a clean up on aisle sitcom. 

    I wish that weren't the case because this comedy about tensions spawned by a looming interracial marriage has a sharp comic cast built around Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, all of whom have their moments.    

    Hill, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Kenya Barris (Blackish), plays Ezra Cohen, a broker who wants to make a living as a podcaster with his partner Mo (Sam Jay). Jay and Hill give the movie a promising opening, bantering freely about hiphop culture. 

   But romcom rumbles loom and along with them typical comedy ploys.

   After concluding that he'll never find true love, Ezra has a meet-cute with Amira Mohammed (Lauren London). The two connect, but the movie takes a Meet-the-Parents turn with emphasis on racial and cultural differences taking charge, too often in obvious ways.

     Louis-Dreyfus plays Ezra's mom as a stereotypical liberal who spills her wokeness like a drunk trying to hold an overfilled glass of wine. She’s inappropriate in her blatant displays of “liberalism”

    Murphy portrays Akbar, Amira's Muslim dad. Murphy occasionally succeeds at squeezing a bit of funny out of a stern character and gives the film its strongest presence.

    David Duchovny and Nia Long are largely wasted as respective spouses. 

   How broad can the humor get? At a dinner where the parents meet, Louis-Dreyfus's Shelley sets fire to Akbar's kufi, a treasured cap supposedly given to him by none other than Louis Farrakhan. Attempts to introduce humor about Jews and Blacks are more referenced than explored.

    Ezra's Las Vegas bachelor party (Akbar attends) also lands with a thud and a gratuitous introduction of cocaine use.

    London also could have used some scenes of her own.

    Look, there are laughs to be found here, particularly in the early scenes, but You People shows little interest in ruffling feathers. 

    Before the movie concludes, everyone learns lessons about tolerance, love, and open-mindedness and You People squanders an opportunity to take a more challenging ride across comedy’s cutting edge.

 

Two black men outsmart a racist system

Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson play men who learned how to play a rigged game and win -- at least for a while..

Toward the end of The Banker, Joe Morris — a streetwise nightclub owner played by Samuel L. Jackson — explains why he has joined forces with brainy Bernard Garrett, Jr. (Anthony Mackie) in a plan to circumvent race restrictions and get rich in real estate.

“The game is fun, even when it’s rigged,” says Joe.

When The Banker, which is based on a true story, sticks to Joe's idea, it’s both informative and entertaining. Both Jackson and Mackie are in fine form as very different men who become partners out of necessity. As a black man, Mackie’s Garrett can’t raise sufficient money to enter the real estate game in Los Angeles during the 1950s. Thwarted by the financial establishment, Garrett turns to Morris for financing.

Although he claims to trust no one, Morris becomes involved. He believes in Garrett’s confidence and in his demonstrated ability to master the mathematics required to succeed in real estate.

The movie acquires additional social meaning when Garrett devises a plan to break the color barrier. He’ll school a white laborer (Nicholas Hoult) in how to play the part of a wealthy entrepreneur. Hoult’s Matt Steiner becomes a student with two teachers. Garrett tries to bring him up to speed in math; Morris teaches him how to play golf so that he can associate with the country-club crowd.

Steiner will play a role similar to a ventriloquist's dummy while an unseen Garrett pulls the strings. Garrett and Morris will own everything; Steiner will be an employee.

As the story develops, Garrett also uses his success to engage his social conscience. He rents and sells homes to black buyers in formerly white neighborhoods. He knows that a burgeoning black market can make his plans work.

All goes well until Garrett decides to buy a bank in the highly segregated Texas town where he grew up. Again using Steiner as a front, Garrett purchases the Mainland Bank and begins loaning money to aspiring black businessmen — on the QT, of course. A wary Morris reluctantly goes along.

Every story needs an arc, so we’re pretty sure that Garrett and Morris will hit some major snags, most relating to Texas-style racism. The town's white population would be appalled if they learned that two black men owned the town's bank. How long can Garrett and Morris remain invisible?

Morris proves himself a master of wily pragmatism, posing as Steiner’s chauffeur so that he can keep on eye on his charge. At one point, Garrett’s devoted wife (Nia Long) poses as a cleaning woman so she can observe Steiner, who eventually begins to confuse his faux prowess with the real thing.

Without Garrett's genius, Steiner's bound to mess things up.

Strongest as a commentary on how entrenched racism kept blacks from accumulating wealth, The Banker, director George Nolfi eventually allows the story to bog down in the details of deals that led to Garrett and Morris's undermining. They eventually did jail time.

But Mackie and Jackson never are anything less than convincing as a savvy odd-couple that wouldn't take "no" for an answer. The key: If the front door is locked, look for another way in.

Of course, the overall point trumps the movie's slyer observations: The doors to success never should have been locked in the first place. Or as Joe might have put it: The game shouldn't have been rigged in ways that worked against the smart, well-prepared Garrett from achieving his goals.

Key & Peele -- and a feisty kitten

An unusual comic duo tries to transfer sketch humor to the big screen.

Keanu is the first big screen foray for the comedy team of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, better known to Comedy Central viewers as Key and Peele.

Key and Peele may be a bit of an acquired taste; they're comics who know how to spray their satirical bullets in a variety of directions. They can slip from nerdy middle-class black characters into gangstas without breaking stride, and -- in the bargain -- poke fun at both stereotypes.

In Keanu, Key and Peele build an action-oriented comedy around a kitten that winds up serving as the focal point for a loosely strung series of Los Angeles-based adventures that take on gang banging, the drug culture and a number of familiar movie ploys.

Not all the satire is razor sharp, but Key and Peele have mastered the art of comic teamwork, and they keep the movie silly enough to offset some -- though not all -- of the movie's seriously presented violence.

At the movie's outset, Peele's Rell has fallen into depression after a recent breakup. His mood changes when he comes into possession of a kitten who has fled an outburst of violence between rival mobs.

Happiness, however, can't last: The cat -- which Rell names Keanu -- is captured by a drug czar named Cheddar (Method Man), who runs a gang called The 17th Street Blips.

Rell and his cousin Clarence (Key) embark on a search for the cat by posing as a couple of thugs known as the Allentown Assassins. Meanwhile, the real Allentown Assassins stalk the movie's perimeter.

In full gangsta mode, Peele does what could be taken for a first-rate Ice Cube imitation. Key's switch to a gangsta pose can be amusing because he seldom loses sight of the very conventional father and husband that Clarence really is.

Director Peter Atencio doesn't quite know how to bring the right comic spin to the movie's action, and, as sketch comics, Key and Peele haven't found a way totally to migrate their skills to the big screen.

Still, there are some good bits to be found, notably one in which Clarence tries to instruct skeptical hoods about the musical wonders of George Michael.

Nia Long appears as Clarence's wife, a woman who conveniently goes away for the weekend, leaving Clarence to look for some non-family fun. And Tiffany Haddish portrays Hi-C, a hard-boiled woman attached to Cheddar's crew.

And, yes, Keanu (or the kittens who played him) has as much personality as any of the characters, as well as an inevitable and much exploited "cute" factor that even the baddest of bad asses can't seem to resist.