Salt Lake Tribune Review

"Michael Jackson's This Is It" carries a title dripping with tragic irony.

The title for Jackson's 50-concert stand at London's O2 Arena, which was to have begun July 9, was a triumphant declaration that Jackson was bringing his whole arsenal of musical gifts to the stage for millions of fans.

But with Jackson's death on June 25, the title became sadly dismissive. The King of Pop is gone, leaving his fans and friends to look at the hours of rehearsal footage and think, "Well, this is it -- this is all that's left."

Director Kenny Ortega, the man in charge of making Jackson's concert dreams become reality, has made the most of this sad situation. The movie Ortega has pieced together is part concert film, part backstage documentary, and all tribute to Jackson's painstaking musical perfectionism.

From the opening song, "Wanna Be Startin' Something," the rehearsal footage shows Jackson fully in control of the production -- working out dance moves, talking about cues with Ortega and the crew, and leading a troupe that included seven instrumentalists, four backup singers and 13 dancers. He looks thin, but hardly frail, in spite of his regular comments that "I'm saving my throat" for the performances.

For all the concert's high-tech aspects -- including elaborate pre-filmed sequences to introduce songs, such as borrowing Rita Hayworth's performance in "Gilda" to set up "Smooth Criminal" -- it's clear that Jackson was determined to make it as real as possible. In most songs, Jackson was doing the singing onstage, without any Ashlee Simpson lip-sync tricks. (A notable exception is the performance of "Thriller," which combined a filmed-in-3D haunted-house sequence with onstage choreography re-creating the classic zombie moves of the 1983 video. Maybe Jackson planned to sing it in concert, but here Ortega relies on a pretaped vocal.)

The set pieces show Jackson's musical variety, but one number near the finale reveals the singer's occasional overreach. "Earth Song," with its lyrics about "all the children dead from war" and "this crying Earth, its weeping shores," comes off as sanctimonious -- and the planned production, including a huge bulldozer leaping off the video screen onto the stage, looked even more overbearing.

But when Ortega keeps the spotlight on Jackson, the man, the results are revelatory. On songs like "Human Nature," where Ortega splices together footage from at least three rehearsal sessions, we get to see Jackson in his element. He experiments with his dance moves, keeping some and rejecting others, and we can see his mind at work as he hones his performance to a gleaming edge.

In its focus on Jackson in the process of creating his art, "This Is It" becomes more than just a reminder of what the world lost. It shows us the sweat that went into making Jackson's music and performances look so effortless.

-- Sean P. Means

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