Are You a Bad Enough Film to Save the President?

In 1998, Michael Jackson was the biggest pop star in the world. This was before things took a turn, the accusations of grooming and weird sleepovers with kids, along with other strange behaviors and incidents, when it seemed like his star would simply continue to rise. If Michael Jackson wanted to do a project, people lined up because his name meant success. He’s released the biggest album of all time, Thriller, and then the second greatest selling album of all time (at the time) with Bad. He was the undisputed king of pop, a cultural phenomenon that could do no wrong (right up until he did).

Bad was, in fact, meant to be the next big step for Jackson. It wasn’t just supposed to be an album (that he thought would be even more successful than Thriller, although it wasn’t); it was meant to be a whole multimedia experience. The album was intended to have a movie that went with it, Moonwalker, and then video games that tied into that, and so much more. But Bad wasn’t as successful as Thriller, and the movie didn’t end up getting a theatrical release near the time of the album’s arrival… or any theatrical release at all. Dumped onto home video, and then scuttled off to parts unknown, Moonwalker has remained a strange curiosity that’s hard to find, and even weirder to watch.

Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker is an anthology musical film featuring a variety of clips, music videos, and story segments, all stitched together with tracks from Bad (and a few from earlier in his solo career and during his time with The Jackson 5). It is a very odd movie, the kind of thing that I doubt anyone would have really wanted to watch in theaters (unless you were among the Michael Jackson faithful), better experienced in bits and pieces on TV or DVD. Not that you can get it on DVD in the U.S. at this point as the film hasn’t seen a home video release since a Laser Disc edition. Some segments have been released in box sets of the artist’s music, but never the whole film since. Not stateside, anyway.

Weirdly, though, Amazon Prime has it streaming now, so I was able to sit down and watch a film I haven’t seen since a random airing on VH1 back in the 1990s. And, yes, it’s just as strange and disjointed now as it was then. Maybe even moreso.

“Man in the Mirror”

The film opens with, frankly, one of its weakest segments right off the bat. We get concert footage of Jackson performing “Man in the Mirror”, the seventh track off Bad. This is one of my least favorite tracks off that album (and it’s an album that has a lot of good music in it, mind you), feeling like the song is too preachy and treacly for my tastes. This concert video version isn’t much better, intercutting Jackson’s performance with shots of the audience absolutely fawning over him, and footage of presidents, children in Africa, and charity workers (including Mother Theresa). It feels weird having Jackson essentially equating himself with these souls, and the whole thing feels very tacky.

Jackson really wanted to spread a message of hope and change. I get that. The song may have inspired people at the time. Hell, maybe this video did, too. It just doesn’t work for me and I was glad when this segment was over.

“Retrospective”

Following this we get a montage of Michael Jackson’s performing life, from the early days in The Jackson 5 through his solo albums (primarily Off the Wall and Thriller) until we get into the next segment for the song “Bad”. This segment is also, let’s be honest, terrible. It’s 11 minutes of musical montage without any real theme linking the bits and pieces. Sometimes the Jacksons are portrayed as paper cut-outs, other times with off putting claymation. At one point there’s a toy robot that dances like Michael. It’s very weird.

What it mostly does is showcase the few tracks from these early days that did work (mostly just “ABC”), and serve to illustrate that once Michael went out on his own (to release his really good albums) things got much better. Nothing he put out before Off the Wall was really worth listening to, anyway. And hell, you can see why Thriller was such a big hit considering songs like “Billie Jean” and “Thriller” were on there. Even what little we see of the music video for “Thriller” here is miles better than anything else in this segment.

We’re two parts in and this film is already off to a really rough start. Not a great way to get audiences interested in your movie.

“Badder”

To be honest, “Bad” is not one of Michael Jackson’s best music videos. The song itself is a bop, for sure, but no one is going to look at Michael, with his sparkly glove and his gang of choreographed dancers and think, “yeah, this dude is a hardcore gangster.” There’s a level of tongue in cheek humor that has to be accepted by the video, which is part of what makes the actual parody, Weird Al’s “Fat”, so good. It amps it to eleven and you don’t even have to think about it. But “Bad” rides the line weirdly, a little too self-seriously, to actually work.

This is made even more obvious when you have kids replacing Michael Jackson and his dancers, in a recreation of the “Bad” video. The segment stars Brandon Quintin Adams, a kid who rose to fame for being able to dance like Michael Jackson, and in fairness, the kid has moves. Most of the rest of them do not, and that only makes the whole thing seem sillier. Yes, the segment is considered a parody, and there’s some light humor in it, but it still feels weird to see kids playing “tough” while dancing to the video.

“Bad” is a fun song. “Badder” is not a great video for it. Not quite silly enough to work as parody but too silly to even function in that weird zone where the video for “Bad” was just watchable enough. This feels like a real miss.

“Speed Demon”

Sliding in off the end of “Badder”, this segment sees a bunch of creepy, strange looking people (rendered via claymation and oversized costumes designed to look like the claymation) chasing after Jackson. They’re all superfans that want a piece of the King of Pop, but Michael just wants to get away and go be, well, whatever version of a normal person he thinks he is. That part, actually, isn’t ever made clear, especially considering what happens in the video as the pursuit goes on.

At a certain point Jackson finds a rabbit costume and puts it on, and at this stage the entire video takes on the air of a Looney Tunes cartoon (just done in claymation). Bunny-Jackson hops on a motorbike and drives off, pursued through the city by his fans. One by one he dispatches them, changing into alternate personas, like Sly Stallone or Pee Wee Herman, and setting traps for his fans. Once he’s chased them all off, he heads out into the desert and gets rid of the costume, becoming Michael once more.

And then he has a dance off. The costume comes to life and it has the moves of Jackson himself. So the two get into it, performing a little duo number, live and claymation, all before a cop shows up and gives Michael a ticket for dancing too hard in a no dancing zone. It’s weird and silly, and almost works… but not quite.

The whole setup for the segment is weird, in part because the fans chasing after Michael don’t look human (which says weird things about how Jackson viewed his fans), and also because despite Michael running from his fans he also seems to be having fun the whole time. Why is he running? Does he hate his fans or does he like to be pursued? The message is muddied through this segment, and then it’s made weirder when the costume comes to life and dances alongside the popstar. The segment lacks cohesion, which holds it back from being really interesting.

The song’s not bad, though. “Speed Demon” isn’t one of the best tracks on Bad, but it does have a decent beat to it. And it’s certainly a damn sight better than the truly terrible tracks on the album, like “Liberian Girl” or “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”. Those are boring songs while at least “Speed Demon” has a bopping beat to it.

“Leave Me Alone”

This is actually the first truly interesting segment of the film, which isn’t really that great when we consider the movie is already a third of the way done at this point. Still, “Leave Me Alone” (which also served as the music video for the song) has energy and creativity to it, providing a focused and enjoyable three-plus minutes for the movie. Had this come earlier in the film (perhaps by excising some of the other segments of the movie instead) I think that would have really helped to perk up Moonwalker up to this point.

The segment plays out like an amusement park ride, animated in a kind of stop-motion style. Michael, first seen in tabloid articles detailing many strange rumors about the popstar post-Thriller, sings about just wanting to be left alone by the press. He then hops onto the amusement park ride, which is also built around himself, and he goes on the whole journey. It’s strange and surreal, but also pretty effective. It illustrates well the popstar’s frustrations with how the tabloids depicted him, and it sends across the message that he really did just want to be left alone.

Now, of course, he was also a huge star and this segment comes in a giant movie all about him, so I’m not sure that message is really well put in the context of the larger film. “I want to be left alone but, also, come watch this strange movie all about me where sometimes I’m a claymation rabbit and other times I become a giant robot,” is, perhaps, a mixed message at the very minimum. The segment works well on its own, and I really like it. But when you view it in the context of Moonwalker it does feel a tad strange.

“Smooth Criminal”

This is the longest, and likely most famous, section of the film. Clocking in at 40 minutes, it’s almost half the runtime of the film (especially if we discount the closing credits), and it’s also truly, weirdly bizarre. This is the section where Michael Jackson turns into a giant space robot, yes, and if you can piece together why he can do that, or anything else that happens in this section of the film, you have a better sense of the creative decisions made here than I have. It’s just so very weird.

In “Smooth Criminal” (the segment, not the music video, although the music video is also part of this segment), Michael is friends with three orphans: Sean (Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon), Katie (Kellie Parker), and Zeke (Brandon Quintin Adams once again). As Michael emerges from his townhome to head out and meet up with the kids, criminal mastermind Frankie "Mr. Big" Lideo (who goes unnamed in the film, but is played by Joe Pesci) has his goons try and kill the popstar. They fire on him with a whole row of machine guns, making a very public attempt on his life.

Why? Because, as we then see, Michael and the kids had been out playing in the hills outside the city when their dog, Skipper, ran off. Michael and Katie go after the pupper, but then stumble upon a hidden entrance into Mr. Big’s headquarters. There they see Big go on and on about spreading his drugs around the world, getting kids hooked on them, and so on. Katie screams when a spider crawls on her hand, the bad guys see the girl and Michael, and a chase ensues.

Now, assuming that Jackson will rat on him, Big wants him dead. He chases the popstar around the city after the hit fails, and they pursue him into a dead end alley. But on the power of a star, Michael is able to change into a car and escape. He flees to a club where he performs a long version of “Smooth Criminal” (thus giving this segment its name), but while this is going on, Big kidnaps Katie. This leads to a final confrontation between Jackson and the villain where, yes, Michael turns into a giant space robot to fight the bad guys and win the day.

Look, “Smooth Criminal” is a fantastic song and the music video’s portion of this segment is fantastic. It’s got a 1930s gangster vibe (which the film hangs a hat on by literally calling the joint Michael performs in “Club 1930s”), the song is a killer, and the dancing is on point. Everything about this section is great and I could watch the “Smooth Criminal” video again and again. This is peak Michael Jackson.

At the same time, though, the rest of the “Smooth Criminal” segment, with Michael and the kids, just doesn’t work. There’s a 1980s family-friendly adventure vibe to the piece which stands in stark contrast not only to the plot, with Michael fighting an evil drug kingpin. It’s also a weirdly violent section of the film, with our hero, Jackson, killing a whole lot of dudes. It’s not gory or bloody, but it certainly is weird to go from the guy that was singing at the start of the movie about looking at the “Man in the Mirror”, wanting peace and change, to the version of him blowing away gangsters left, right, and center with guns. That feels… odd, to say the least.

And also, not that I want to delve deep into the controversies of the popstar, but watching this segment now, 35 years removed from when the movie was made, it is really weird to see Jackson hanging out with a bunch of orphan kids. Like, I get it, he had a child-like sense of wonder and there was a part of him that didn’t really ever grow up (at least, as per people that knew him). But when you consider he was sued for possible sexual assault of a minor, seeing him palling around with kids here is also not a great look.

So yeah, this section doesn’t really work. It’s strange and wild and iconic, to be sure. The best part of it, though, is the music video portion. Well, that and the fact that this section inspired a pretty legit arcade game.

“Come Together”

I don’t much care for the Beatles. Most of their songs do nothing for me. With that said, “Come Together” is a great track. I would argue it’s one of the all time great rock songs, in point of fact. And while there have been a number of versions of the song over the years (by Ike and Tina Turner, by just Pal McCartney, by just John Lennon, by Godsmack, etc.), there are two great versions of the song. The Beatles, of course, have one of the two great versions since they wrong it. Aerosmith had the other, recording it for the Beatles tribute movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. That’s a terrible movie, but Aerosmith killed it on that cover.

Michael Jackson, so in 1985 bought the rights to the Beatles catalog, does not have a good cover of the song. He was perfectly within his rights, as the song owner at the time, to do whatever he wanted with it and covering the song is a fine use of the material. It’s just that Jackson doesn’t nail the heart and body of the song. It lacks the crunchy juice that makes the song so good. His version, originally recorded for Bad before being cut and released later, is presented in Moonwalker as a concert performance tracking right on the end of the “Smooth Criminal” segment and, man, it sucks.

Jackson is a great performer and he can sing his stuff with style. He seems lost on this cover, though, not really getting how the lyrics work together or what the song was really trying to say. His version is over indulgent, overly technical, and just not very fun. Everything that’s great about “Come Together” is missing here and it ruins it. And, as the song to end the main body of the film, it’s just not what you want to see.

“Closing Credits”

Finally, we’re treated to a pair of segments joined together by the closing credits. The first is a performance of "The Moon is Walking" by Ladysmith Black Mambazo on the Club 1930s set from "Smooth Criminal". No offense to the group, who are solid performers, but this just does not fit the movie. Even taking into account how tonally inconsistent this movie was, start to finish, Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s song doesn’t fit the vibe of Moonwalker. It’s weirdly mellow when compared to all of Jackson’s own music, and it just feels like a strange song to put as the “come down” moment after the end of Jackson’s big anthology movie. I don’t hate the song but I do hate its placement in this movie.

The second section is another version of “Smooth Criminal”, the song. This is the same song again, laid over footage and outtakes from the segment, with the footage sped up and slowed down. It’s fine. It was used as an alternate music video, which maybe some would have liked (although with Moonwalker only getting a small release on video, I don’t know how many people would have understood what all they were watching in this alternate take). But it’s weird to use this song again when Bad had other songs not featured in this movie (like “The Way You Make Me Feel”, which only had a tiny clip in the “Retrospective” segment) that wouldn’t have felt like filler just to get the credits over with. “Smooth Criminal” is a fantastic song. We didn’t need it twice in the movie.

And, overall, I’m not really certain we needed Moonwalker. The best bits of the movie are the parts that made for easily digestible music videos. What doesn’t work is, well, everything else. I can see why this film hasn’t had another major release in the U.S. in sometime, with only small parts of it featuring on Michael Jackson collections. Those are the bits people care about while everything else in this film is just there for the super fans and the curious.

That’s really what Moonwalker feels like at this point: a curiosity. It came at a time when Michael Jackson’s fame was at an all time high, when everyone expected Bad to be the biggest album ever. While it was a massive smash, eventually selling 25 Mil-plus records, it wasn’t able to achieve the same popularity as Thriller. And after that, Jackson slowly slid back down from the massive heights he achieved. Even a couple of years later Jackson couldn’t have made a film like Moonwalker. And, even at the height of his popularity, he couldn’t get this movie out in theaters.

It’s interesting to watch, once, just to see it. But now, having watched the whole thing in one long run, I feel like I’m good. Jackson got to make his movie and, via streaming, I could see it again. I don’t think I’ll feel the need to do that another time.