This Is It: A FAQ For the Doubting Moviegoer

It's unoffically MJ Day at Movieline, where a good chunk of the virtual water-cooler conversation has revolved around the opening day of Michael Jackson's This is It. And a fraction of that chatter has raised a number of questions, concerns and doubts that many casual Jackson fans yet serious moviegoers have about the quality and sincerity of the legend's posthumous performance film. After the jump, find some of the most pressing This Is It questions asked and answered -- and feel free to submit your own for consideration. No reasonable inquiries turned away!

So what is This Is It? A performance film? A documentary? A hagiography?

All of the above, and a little more. As director Kenny Ortega explained last week to Movieline, This Is It pares down about 80 hours of footage from rehearsals, interviews, interstitial 3-D film shoots, and other material shot during the lead-up to Jackson's concerts in London. Assembled, it comes out as a surprisingly organic blend of concert flick and straightforward doc, with little experimental flourishes (split-screen, animation, consumer-grade digital footage, etc.) laced throughout. It's part fluff in the sense that it features MJ's dancers and background musicians praising him to the skies. But if you look at This Is It from the perspective of how he'd influenced a lot of these individuals -- and the performance levels that influence elevated them to here -- it's sincere and occasionally quite powerful.

Kenny Ortega is really pushing this whole "we did for the fans" talking point. Is that just an excuse for This Is It to suck?

There definitely is a bit of ass-covering going on with the "we did it for the fans" schtick. After all, if the critics love This Is It and it joins the "legit" MJ canon, then that would mean all those cruel media skeptics finally came around. If they dismiss it out of hand and continue to rail against the cynical purveyance of Dead Michael, then they don't matter anyway -- it's "for the fans"! A better tack for Ortega and Co. to take would have been to just leave the dedication -- and the film -- to speak for itself. In any case, it doesn't suck.

Still, will I leave feeling violated? I already feel like an accessory to some posthumous Michael Jackson media gang-raping.

That's totally fair. From the immediate MJ postmortems to the memorial service to the hype preceding This Is It, it's been a grueling four months for folks who wouldn't mind zoning out to Eternal Moonwalk and letting the poor man's spirit rest in peace. And there's no denying this film is a for-profit endeavor on behalf of AEG Live and Sony. But let's face it: MJ himself had not been a reliable barometer of good taste for years. That these tapes exist at all is a testament to both his hubris and his conviction that these proceedings had value. I really do believe that their assemblage in This Is It reflects those interests as much as (if not more than) those of his so-called violators.

How does Michael look?

Gaunt but generally lively. You would never guess that this guy is strung out on Propofol.

How does Michael sound?

Hit or miss. "I'm saving my voice," he cries at several junctures, and I'm pretty sure "Thriller" is overdubbed entirely. But he's got it on "Human Nature"and "Smooth Criminal," and he gives as good as he gets in his little creative exchanges with musicians, Ortega and others.

Yes or no: Would Michael really have wanted us to see this stuff?

Yes and no. A lot of it -- like the 3-D "Smooth Criminal," "Thriller" and "Earth Song" footage -- was filmed for the concerts themselves. The production excerpts from those segments show MJ lucid, quick-witted, motivated and alert, and they have DVD extras (at least) written all over them. The rehearsals themselves are inconclusive. Alternately fierce, sweet, half-hearted and overwhelmed, MJ wouldn't likely have green-lit himself melting down during and after "One More Chance." But his involvement with his band during "The Way You Make Me Feel" ("Play it like you're dragging yourself out of bed") and "Black or White" is simply otherworldly. That kind of mastery must be shared; it's how we learn. I don't really care who's getting rich off his legacy as long as they're bringing us stuff like that.

How does the film look?

Pretty good overall. The lack of coverage on the stage (two hi-def cameras) is compensated for by intercutting between three separate rehearsals and, when possible, those 3-D shorts. But there's zero excuse for leaning on the crappy consumer-grade digital video between the rest of this stuff, some of which looked like it could have been shot on a mobile phone.

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