The "critics" can talk this movie down as much as they want. For the older crowd the movie will not be denied.
For my wife and I this movie was quite a bit reminiscent of The Force Awakens. It felt like you were watching your pop culture life flash before your eyes.
So many (but not all) of the major moments are recreated here to great effect. For young people, they didn't live through it. It's hard to describe just how huge MTV was at the time, and how huge pop music was at the time. So much bigger than it is now that it's staggering just how different things would become, and Michael Jackson was at the very center of it, the heart of it all. And the moments that are recreated here (the Motown 25th Anniversary Special; the Beat It video with the dancing and the Eddie Van Halen solo, and especially the Thriller video), are recreated beautifully in the film.
I think it's going to be very interesting to see how the film performs. How divisive will it be; people that lived through it are going to love it and be enthralled by it; younger people might hate it, as it's certainly NOT the Michael Jackson they know, the one known not for being any artist of any kind, but a media villain. I think older people will be tempted to go see it more than once. Time will tell. But it does capture a pop culture zeitgeist and does it well, so I wonder how it will fare.
Also: it will be interesting to see the Rotten Tomato Audience Score, vs, the critics score on this one.
