IMDb plot summary: Anthology movie by, and starring, Michael Jackson in his prime, combining a number of music videos from his bestselling "Bad" album with a fantasy tale of Michael's confrontation with a ruthless drug dealer known as Mr. Big (Joe Pesci).
Directed by Jerry Kramer. Starring Michael Jackson, Joe Pesci, Kellie Parker, and Brandon Quintin Adams.
When my mysterious benefactor assigned me this movie for my movie challenge, the note was something like, "If you're not a Michael Jackson fan, Moonwalker might be a tough watch." Well, they lucked out, because I am a *huge* Michael Jackson fan and enjoyed this for the most part. It's a weird little anthology of concert performances, reimagined music videos, and short films centered around Michael Jackson songs. MJ was an incredibly dynamic performer, and by far my favorite sections were anything where I got to hear him sing and watch him dance (thus the chosen screenshot). Those just brought me such joy. The "Smooth Criminal" segment takes up about half the film and while I loved how wonderfully over-the-top ridiculous it was (Michael turns into a car? Sure! And now he's a robot spaceship? Why not! And Joe Pesci is somehow using spiders to peddle drugs to children? Yup!), it was much longer than it needed to be. Who wants to watch a Michael Jackson music film for 10 minutes of spaceship fights? I wish that one had been about a third as long and made way for a couple other imaginative musical segments. I spent about 30 minutes after the credits rolled watching MJ music videos on YouTube because I just hadn't gotten quite enough of the music itself. Overall, though, a fun (if weird) flick.
3.5 stars.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Moonwalker > Days of Heaven
Moonwalker < Children of Men
Moonwalker > A Matter of Life and Death
Moonwalker < The Call (I debated over this one way longer than I expected)
Moonwalker > Duck Soup
Moonwalker < The Big Short
Moonwalker > The Return of the Living Dead
Moonwalker > The Killing (Why is this so high up on my chart? That can't be right.)
Moonwalker < Chronicle
Moonwalker > Starship Troopers
Final spot: #825 out of 2495, or 67%. Maybe deserves to be higher.
No comments:
Post a Comment