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It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Just because LA Reid is the handler of Justin Bieber I don't why he puts him in to things when Michael Jackson worked all his life. To me it was a cut & paste film. I prefer the original Michael Jackson short films especially Ghost compared to this one. Granted Mariah Carey was a friend of Michael's but how did she & Bieber end up in this? I as a true fan of Michael Jackson never support anything with Justin Bieber in it. Once again MJ worked hard at his craft not to have it pasted together & a person that may "idolize him" be put in to this. It just makes me ill. LA Reid stop putting Bieber in Michael Jackson projects. I will stick to the original items of Michael Jackson. Thank you.

Don't get me wrong, I love Spike Lee and I love MJ, but this documentary just isn't that good. I saw it at the Filmfestival in Venice this summer, and was really looking forward to it, especially since Spike was there at the viewing. He was cool. The film let me down a little bit, though. Even though especially the footage of the making of 'Bad' and the origins of other songs were great to see and very interesting, some of the interviews with celebrities were not. People like Justin Bieber and Mariah Carey did not have a lot to contribute, and for me the tear-jerking question 'where were you when you heard about Michael's death?' (followed by a montage of celebrities looking down, tearing up etc) could have been left out. It is important to pay a tribute to the King of Pop, of course, but it could have been done in a tighter and 'smoother' way. It reminded me too much of some MTV 'The Rise & Rise of..' format. The style of the film (talking head, weird cross zoom rotate fade, original footage, talking head) was also part the reason why to me it felt it should have ended about twenty minutes before it did.

1987 was when the King of Pop released his successful follow-up album to the record breaking, critically acclaimed and award winning Thriller, and 2012 was the time when the album Bad would be celebrating its twenty fifth anniversary, so this film tells the story of how it came to be, from director Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, "They Don't Care About Us" music video). Michael Jackson wanted to take somewhat of a different approach with his follow-up to Thriller and hoped to sell even more copies of the album, and this film shows behind the scenes of his writing, recording and performing the songs and their videos during the making of the Bad album. This includes film director Martin Scorsese, and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker, looking back at the making of the video for the title single, "Bad", including what it was like working with Michael, the dance routines, the costumes, the casting of Wesley Snipes and much more. We see Joe Pytka (Space Jam) talk about directing Michael and him being shy about doing a kissing scene in the video for "The Way You Make Me Feel" and it instead ends with hugging, we see the making of "Another Part of Me" and him performing to an audience of thousands, and we see how a slow ballad song idea emerged into "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" which was a duet with Siedah Garrett (it could have been Whitney Houston). We see celebrity fans asking if any particular Diana was the one sung about in the single "Dirty Diana", we see the origins of the lyric "Annie are you okay?" in the song "Smooth Criminal" and discussions about the famous dance moves including the lean, and we find out more about the lyrics written in the song "Leave Me Alone", and the other songs on the album are talked about in some detail as well: "Speed Demon", "Liberian Girl" and "Just Good Friends" which featured Stevie Wonder. Of course the celebrities interviewed also talk about where they were, how they heard and how they reacted about the death of Michael, and what he meant to them in their lives, and this magnificence he created is perfectly captured with the album's pivotal song, "Man in the Mirror", written by Garrett it is truly one of his greatest and most loved songs, not just for the album Bad but in his career, it was the song that in the UK got to number two after his death. With contributions from Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, Cee Lo Green, Quincy Jones, Usher, Antonio 'L.A.' Reid, Kanye West and many more. It is very interesting documentary about the creation of such a memorable and successful album from one of the most iconic pop stars in the world, this is definitely a really suitable and well put together film to go with the celebration, a great music documentary. Michael Jackson was number 14 on The 100 Greatest Pop Culture Icons, and he was number 6 on The Ultimate Pop Star. Very good!

NOTE: This is a review of the sixty-four minute snippet of Spike Lee's Bad 25 that aired on ABC on November 22, 2012. The original film is about two hours and eleven minutes and is scheduled to be released on DVD in February 2013. When available, I will publish a new review of the full length film, which will be mixed points from this review along with newly established ones.Every artist, big or small, comes billed with their own projected style or personal feature. Gene Simmons had his tongue, Madonna had her dresses, but Michael Jackson had his moves and "his groove," music executive Andre Harrell tells us in Spike Lee's much-anticipated Bad 25. Just watching an old video of Michael Jackson performing live and dancing on stage inspires all sorts of reactions among the old and the young. His talents are unforgettable, his music, touching in the way words can not describe, and eternal, much like his spirit.We begin by welcoming expected statistics to the table; Michael Jackson's album Thriller is the best selling album in music history, how do you follow it up? With another fantastic record that boasts five singles, all of which charting number one. That album, of course, is the iconic Bad, released in 1987, with a cover boasting Michael staring at you in a black leather jump-suit with several silver buckles, and the five singles being "I Just Can't Stop Loving You," "Bad," "Man in the Mirror," "The Way You Make Me Feel," and "Dirty Diana." After those back-to-back successes, you can bet that pretty much every tune off the album became its own single.Followed up are a variety of interviews from modern stars such as Mariah Carey, Chris Brown, and Kanye West, and a number of artists and composers that had firsthand experience with Michael such as his main producer, Quincy Jones and Tatiana Thumbtzen, who co-starred with him in the music video for "The Way You Make Me Feel," where she remarks fondly about how Michael was so shy and vulnerable, leading the director of the short film to change the ending from a kiss to a simple hug. I say short film purely for the spirit of Michael Jackson; he never liked to call the video counterparts for his songs "music videos," but "short films," and they definitely played like one. The only modern artist I can think of that tries to tag on a story with her videos is Lady Gaga, but even she can't embody the true sense of power and bombastic greatness of the king of pop.Quite possibly the most interesting segment in the film is the footage we get behind the scenes of the Bad short film shoot, with acclaimed director Martin Scorsese manning the camera. In front of it are not only Michael Jackson with a band of young, highly-skilled choreographers, but Wesley Snipes in a debut role as the one peer pressuring Michael before he exclaims loudly and proudly that he is "bad." But not criminally bad; "bad" as in cool, he says.Another short film shoot we explore is the production of the kinetic, infectious anthem "Smooth Criminal," which just so happens to be one of my favorite Michael Jackson songs. We see how deeply and closely the short mimics the film noir style of pictures like The Third Man, with its heavy use of shadow and color. In its entirety, the short is expertly crafted and the music is beautifully sung, and like mentioned in the film, is completely worth it to see the "Smooth Criminal" lean, where Michael and his group of dancers lean forward to the point of almost appearing horizontal.Bad 25 will suffer by comparison to Michael Jackson film greats like Michael Jackson's Moonwalker and Michael Jackson's This Is It. It's difficult to top those cherished pictures mainly because it shows Michael as a living, breathing human, and what we're left with is to remember him through archived concert footage and the hundreds of interviews he gave in his heyday. I'm giving this cut of the documentary three stars only as a placeholder because I can sense that it is heavily cut and a large part of the exploration in the five singles feels rather slim. To judge this entire project solely on the viewing of the hour-long special we were fortunate to get is a little disheartening and unfair. I haven't seen the half of it - literally.Starring: Michael Jackson, Jermaine Jackson, Quincy Jones, Martin Scorsese, Cee Lo Green, Chris Brown, Mariah Carey, Kanye West, Sheryl Crow, and Tatiana Thumbtzen. Directed by: Spike Lee.