- Network: SHOWTIME
- Series Premiere Date: Feb 5, 2016
Critic Reviews
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This is the second doc that the Jackson estate has hired Lee to helm, and it’s a marked improvement over the one made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Bad.
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A completely successful attempt to re-position Michael Jackson as a profoundly self-aware artist, as opposed to the freakish and tragic celebrity that he became, Spike Lee’s Michael Jackson’s Journey From Motown To Off The Wall is both thrilling and instructional.
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By loading his film with musicians and producers and songwriters who can take a song down to its components--some of whom were behind the scenes, some of whom were then just kids buying the records--Lee keeps his celebration smart and not soppy.
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The film’s producers include the two executors of Jackson’s estate, and it is predictably admiring, though Mr. Lee keeps it from feeling too fawning, at least until the closing minutes. What it resembles more than anything is a deluxe extended episode of a television music-biography series like “Unsung” (or “Behind the Music” minus the scandals).
User score distribution:
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Positive: 25 out of 29
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Mixed: 2 out of 29
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Negative: 2 out of 29
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Nov 9, 2017