Movie Summary of This Is It by Michael the Moviegoer.
THIS IS IT = ***1/2
“A Real Thriller”
When the year began, Kenny Ortega (director of “High School Musical” and “Newsies”) couldn’t possibly have imagined that he would have one of the year’s best documentaries. The tragic and untimely death of Michael Jackson last summer, only days before launching his final concerts in London, paved the way for Ortega to assemble his rehearsal footage into the film “This Is It”.
A knee-jerk reaction would be to dismiss this as a tasteless marketing ploy to capitalize on Jackson’s death and the worldwide media hype that surrounded it. But Ortega has lovingly put together a tribute to the late King Of Pop without any of the tabloid sensationalism one would expect to find in such a project. This movie is all about the music, the dancing, the professionalism and the awesome talent of Michael Jackson.
“This Is It” portrays Jackson as confident and determined. His passion and energy is simply exhilarating to watch. The film takes us through the rehearsal process of a lavishly complicated live concert show unlike any ‘Behind The Scenes’ DVD bonus material has ever done before. That’s because what was likely to end up serving as bonus material someday, is now front-and-center the only document of the show. This is an intimate eye-opening look at the wizard behind the curtain. And clearly this was going to be the greatest live concert experience of all time had Jackson lived to perform it.
Nearly every song in the film was a massive hit that every audience member will know by heart. Jackson comes off as professional, warm and human throughout. The only moment where he becomes agitated is when he’s singing a medley of his old Jackson 5 hits. This causes him to go into a rage about his earpiece. The moment is all too telling about how uncomfortable Jackson was with his past. But, as he says, this concert is for the fans. So he struggles through those J5 hits for them.
“This Is It” is not a documentary about Michael Jackson. It’s about the staging of a live concert that combines complicated choreography, giant-screen video interaction, dizzying pyrotechnics and some of the hardest-grooving music known to man. Ortega’s tight and creative editing makes this one hell of a music video.
DVD Double Feature: Imagine if Michael Jackson didn’t die and “This Is It” was a subversive work of fiction with an actor playing Jackson. Huh…? In 2005, Brad Kimmel created a phony documentary about a band of musicians in the 70s who died before they could deliver their music to the world. The band and the film are called “Novem”. They were nine college students at a six-day recording session that yielded an album that would have been hailed as a masterpiece had it been released in 1973. But the students were killed in a van accident while returning home from those sessions. Thirty years later, the lost master tapes from those sessions are purchased at a garage sale and a documentary is created out of this lost material. But the whole movie is a work of fiction. This stunning achievement in mockumentaries has finally just now been released on DVD.
Michael The Moviegoer
