CHICAGO - MOVIE REVIEWS THIS IS IT!

MOVIE REVIEWS THIS IS IT!

Clearly critics who sat in on advance screenings of the Michael Jackson concert documentary This Is It! were expecting to see a shadow of the former vibrant entertainer and a film slapped together to exploit the public frenzy that followed his death. But Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times acknowledges that "this extraordinary documentary [is] nothing at all like what I was expecting so see. Here is not a sick and drugged man forcing himself through grueling rehearsals, but a spirit embodied by music. Michael Jackson was something else." The knowledge that Jackson was receiving regular doses of a plethora of drugs before his death, Ebert writes, "makes it hard to understand how he appears to be in superb physical condition. His choreography, built from such precise, abrupt and perfectly-timed movements, is exhausting, but he never shows a sign of tiring." Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News advises those who might feel reluctant to see the former music idol trying to make a comeback at age 50 just before his death, "Rest assured, the late King of Pop delivers. ... To see Jackson working hard in the hopes of sending shivers down a future audience's spine one last time gives closure to the festival of mourning that followed his death last June." And Ann Powers, the Los Angeles Times 's pop music critic, concludes in her review of the film that if Jackson's London concert performances had actually materialized and he had performed as he does in the film, "he would have accomplished the comeback for which he was so hungry." The film is debuting simultaneously all over the world. In the London Daily Mail , critic Baz Bamigboye wrote that the film reveals "Jackson was a consummate artist, a perfectionist and that the This Is It Concerts would have been just about the best music show of the year." Not all critics are so generous. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post regards the movie as reprehensible -- "a ghoulish 'event' offered just in time for Halloween ... a shoddy piece of exploitation." And Kevin Maher in the London Times says that the filmmakers have achieved "middling" results from their efforts. "It's a strange and ultimately underwhelming way to say goodbye to a troubled, talented performer," he concludes.

28/10/2009