Post by ronnierocketago on Jul 11, 2009 4:19:16 GMT
MOONWALKER (1988) - *1/2
I'll be honest, the only reason I'm reviewing this is because Michael Jackson died. Numerous bad movie afficionado websites have already dissected this sucker bit by beat, so I was pretty certain that this was a loser. Me reviewing it would be akin to roughing up a kid with asthma, or beating a dead horse, for besides no real motivation beyond parading once again my terrible cinema masochistic fetish. Capo would once again nail me dead to rights with his elitist charm. Hell even the idea of trashing MOONWALKER bored me.
I still remember people complained when Eminem trashed MJ in a music video, not because they particular cared about the subject being ridiculed, but because by then Jackson jokes were so overdone and old hat. They weren't humorous anymore, but rather lame. Of course that never detered Jay Leno and his arsenal of expiration date-defying Clinton sex gags and O.J. Simpson one-liners. So to repeat, I didn't have plans to review MOONWALKER until Mr. Jackson finally went underground permanently. Then since it aint on DVD in North America (not that I'm complaining), I found a print on YouTube. A divine colossal waste of time commenced.
Certainly I acknowledge and respect Mr. Jackson's influence on music (among other accomplishments, the first black artist to have a music video broadcast on MTV) and insane global popularity, which at its peak in his THRILLER and BAD album days rivaled that of The Beatles and Elvis. Echoes of this fandom carried though on iTunes immediately after his death where 50 of his songs cracked the Top 100 download charts, 9 in the Top 10, and becoming the first artist in history to score a million downloads there. Plus on Amazon, Jackson albums held the first 16 best-selling slots. Not bad Mike, not bad.
I wouldn't call myself a fan of his, but he still produced some terrific music here and there, also with truckloads of vanilla wafer/tap water work, which is on par for a pop singer. But by the time I came aware and paid attention to contemporary music in the mid-1990s, the King of Pop was irrelevant. Sure he continued to sell records, sell-out concerts worldwide, and still pop a single here and there, but so do relics Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones, where looming legacies overshadow (lacking) immediate consequentialism. This reminds me of that Jackson/McCartney #1 single "Say, Say Say" which proves that starpower alone can rocket a forgettable tune into a hit.
Dammit will I ever break this rambling habit of mine? I gotta stick to the goddamn topic instead of these long-winded tangents. People want to get to the goddamn point. I'm just just jerking off to my massive ego here. Ah shit, there I go again. Anyway, so MOONWALKER opens with one of Jackson's concerts where he performs his hit "The Man in the Mirror," the song that would posthumously knock the Black Eyed Peas off #1 at iTunes, which baffles me because I never liked it. Not a bad song necessarily, but it just does absolutely nothing to me. Then again, so does most "pop music," just so you know I won't hide my bias.
Since the whole motiff of this composition is about "change," (see, it was hip before Obama) Jackson surrounds himself with images of Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Dr. King. Many commentators have criticized this as pure egomania, an entertainer putting himself in the same league as these historical figures. At first, I thought perhaps this was incidental, merely Jackson trying to put forward a well-meaning, albeit generic and non-offensive as hell, universal rallying cry to make the world better. Not exactly an exclusive artistic message.
But what happens subsequently confirms that everyone were actually right after all. We get a too lengthy, redundant and surprisingly dull musical montage sequence detailing Jackson's musiography. First off, if you're watching MOONWALKER than and now, it's probably because you're a Jackson fan and already have listened to or own his catalogue. Second, when the narrator goes on and on about how many albums Jackson have sold and how many songs of his scored #1...Jesus, we get it Mike, people used to give a damn about you. This is pure egotistical masturbation by any self-stylized artist of the worst kind. Ignoring his recent passing, this comes off in 2009 as embarrassingly pathetic.
That said, I did kinda like that one brief shot of a cyborg in stop-animation dancing in sync with Jackson's legendary "Robot" dance routine, which for some reason always impressed me more than the Moonwalk. There I said it mother fuckers.
Following all this disdain stroking, we have this supposed cute and fluffy retake of the "Bad" video, but casted with kids. "Supposed" because it came off as trying to be, as opposed to being, charming. A big difference, plus this whole inappropriate moment when the MJ kid clone grabs himself in the crotch way too hard, which was scripted to be funny. It isn't, and in retrospect with Jackson's reputation0, even disturbing. Now what's humorous was Weird Al Yankovic's parody "Fat," the video which was shot on the same stage used for the remix.
After that nonsense, we get this Loony Tunes-type cartoon/live-action scene with fans chasing Jackson. I won't comment much about it since I'm losing patience fast with MOONWALKER, but I'll just note this follows that classical cliche about the Hollywood studio lot where at one stage a crew is filming a western, and at another a drama or whatever. I wish that convention would die because it's not true anymore, especially not in Hollywood Land.
Next we get the music video for Jackson's "Leave Me Alone," an enjoyable animated tele-record (the original industry slang for music videos) to a pretty good song. It's odd though how he takes a typical break-up exercise and makes the video about the media persecuting him or whatever the hell. Despite liking this portion, I was going to discount it's possible entertainment value from the final verdict because I thought it was produced seperate of MOONWALKER and inserted in post-production, but so far from what I understand, this wasn't the case.
What I did find out, mostly from The Agony Booth's epic review written years back, was that several of the tabloid headlines Jackson rails against, like his rumored buying of the Elephant Man's bones and sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, were leaked to the press by Jackson's camp. In effect you have a singer whining about charges that he leveled against himself. Man, what a hypocritical asshole.
Note how goddamn random and disjointed MOONWALKER is, a real jerky mess. There is no narrative or a real point to all this except how Michael Jackson thinks how awesome Michael Jackson was back in 1988. Considering his numerous videos like "Thriller" were more like glorified short films (his "Ghosts" was 38 minutes long) with high production values, big budgets, and sometimes even hire a big shot in John Landis or Martin Scorsese to direct, one would think that a full-length musical feature was inevitable for the Gloved One. I mean the Beatles did YELLOW SUBMARINE and Pink Floyd had the underrated THE WALL. In fact reportedly, this is what Jackson's PETER PAN movie would have been under Steven Spielberg, before that project got shelved and re-worked into HOOK. Imagine if that Jackson PAN had been filmed. The Beard never would have lived it down, and probably become a more famous misstep than even 1941.
Apparently the story with MOONWALKER floating is that while the production of his "Smooth Criminal" video went way overbudget, Jackson's people decided to craft a film around the video to somehow recoup the costs. Interestingly, Jackson still owns the video budget record at $7 million for "Scream"...done 14 years ago. I bet you didn't know that.
MOONWALKER concludes with the longest section, the only one with any sort of narrative. If I was actually funny, I would crack a joke about Jackson playing in the fields with kids, including a young Sean Lennon (I bet Corey Feldman was jealous). They somehow get trapped in a cave, which leads to the secret lair of baddie Joe Pesci (who we know is evil because of his dark shades), and they (conveniently) overhear his master scheme of pushing drugs to schools. Man, how tragically rich this irony since we've learned of Whacko Jacko's last days of heavy prescription pain killer drug abuse that may have killed him. BTW a junkie teen robbed a local CVS pharmacy near me, who demanded not money, but the store's entire stock of OxyContin.
The only good thing I'll say about all that is, and well the sole reason why anyone would ever bother with MOONWALKER, is the "Smooth Criminal" video itself, which strangely enough has no plot bearing at all with that drug/kids shit. Sure you can say that about most musicals, but this is ridiculous to a whole special level. This is the anti-A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. If push comes to shove, this might be my favorite Jackson song, and the dancing choreography here is creative, fun, outstandingly mesmerizing, and worth the money. In short, the sort of thing that made Jackson's heritage in the first place. But since I don't you to waste your time with MOONWALKER, here is the whole isolated shebang:
In a way, MOONWALKER (minus those two tele-records) is an expensive trainwreck much like Jackson's highly documented personal life and death. How appropriate. Why now did I decide to review MOONWALKER? Because I'm as much of a leech as the media. According to CNN and the other cable news networks, this is the only story. Forget the terrible economy or the persistent courageous protests in Iran, who gave Jackson his drugs? Who will take custody of the kids? Was it murder or an overdose? Will Neverland Ranch become the next Graceland?
All I know is, MOONWALKER cratered.