Antoine Fuqua’s Michael biopic opens to low Rotten Tomatoes score

Antoine Fuqua's Michael opened to a 26% Rotten Tomatoes score from 43 early critic reviews. Reviewers praise Jaafar Jackson's performance while faulting the film for skipping Michael Jackson's later-life controversies and excluding figures like Janet Jackson. Looper called the movie "polished" but "refus[ing] to take risks," and other critics labeled it a "hymn to authorship" that does not interrogate the man behind the music. That split between lead-actor acclaim and narrative sanitization frames expectations for the film's wider release.