A Brilliant Conflict

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

"Michael Jackson's Halloween" is an animated short film from this year, very new, very fresh and as the title tells us this was shown on Halloween for the first time. It is a small screen production that runs a bit over 40 minutes, but still stays in short film territory by IMDb standards. There were quite a few writers and directors working on this one, especially given the runtime, but the outcome may confirm the theory of too many cooks spoiling the broth. The makers aren't too famous here, but the voice cast has some decent names, several very experienced and decorated small screen actors like Baranski, Parsons, Garrett, Cumming, Liu and Eads, only to mention a few. But they should be ashamed a bit to appear in here as this entire project looks to me like a cheap attempt to cash in with Michael Jackson's popularity still years after his death. Animation is tolerable, the story is very mediocre and forgettable. The best thing are the songs by MJ they were allowed to use, but honestly these do not resemble any kind of creativity from the writers or directors here. Overall, not an honorable project in my opinion. I would especially not recommend it to MJ's big fans as they are be the ones who will be most disappointed here. A definite thumbs-down from me. Don't watch.

I was puzzled when I first saw the trailer for this special. What does Michael Jackson have to do with Halloween, outside of the "Thriller" video, which was actually about horror movies rather than about the holiday?The characters looked cute, so I thought I would give it a try. What I saw was 42 minutes of something that played out like a movie based on a video game. The two protagonists, Vincent and Victoria, make their way through a series of challenging areas... a pumpkin patch, a haunted house, a cliff, for example. They encounter strange anthropomorphic characters along the way, some are helpful, some are villains. All this time they are fleeing from an evil magical woman named Conformity, who, like her name suggests, hates individuality and freedom of expression. She is a manifestation of the main characters' real-life job experiences; they both work for unappreciative employers who view them as mere cogs in a machine.What about Michael Jackson? Many hints are dropped throughout the special: a concealed figure with a gloved hand, a chimpanzee chauffeur named "Bubbles" (remember M.J.'s pet chimp?), a Michael Jackson- shaped icon that leads Vincent and Victoria to the next level in their journey. This leads up to an actual encounter with Michael that lasts maybe a couple of minutes.I'm still trying to figure out the rationale behind creating a Halloween special which revolves around a celebrity who died in 2009. Does he return from the dead every October 31? Has he become a zombie, a reference to the "Thriller" music video? So many unanswerable questions. I didn't hate this special. There was a vague "don't give up on your dreams" message to it, which has been overdone. But I think the concept would have had more potential as a video game, with its villains and challenging levels. I highly doubt I would view this a second time, if it is ever rebroadcast.

I have to admit that I didn't even expect this to be good,and it sure didn't disappoint in that regard. It's mostly bland at best.First of all, the animation is below average. Sometimes, it's good enough, but there are times where it didn't look good at all, like the last part of the movie. Have you ever seen those California Raisins commercials? Well, when you finally see Micheal Jackson for the first time, not a single body part or his bat form, the animation will more than likely remind you of that. In fact, that's what most of the dancing at the end looks like. It would have been fine if it was animated with clay, but this is a computer animated special. It also doesn't help that some models looking like plastic dolls, like the main characters for example. Some of it might have something to do with the lighting, but it does show how cheap this show is.Another issue I have is the story. It's your typical "follow your heart" story, but the pacing is a bit fast. Seriously, as soon as a character is introduced, they're gone until the final scene. For example, the main characters' father and boss. Vincent wanted to be a DJ, but his father wants him to take over his grocery business, while Victoria wanted to dance at some party until her boss gives her the job of taking care of her dog for the night. While that much is known, you don't really see those two characters again until the final seconds of the movie. You also have no reason to find these characters interesting. While some of them do have motives, such as Hay Man wanting to bring music back from the authoritarian Calamity, they certainly don't bring any note-worthy personality. In fact, the two main characters are basically walking pieces of wood. Some of this could be blamed on pacing, since a majority don't have that much screen time, but these characters could've been fleshed out a bit more. Overall, the story wasn't great in the slightest, and it was just so bland.It's pretty hard to recommend this movie. While it's not a bad movie, it's just bland to the point that you wish it was. It's fast pacing doesn't help matters either, as it just made the movie sorta hard to follow. I recommend not watching this movie seriously. About the only things about this special that was decent was the voice acting and music, but with experienced actors such as Jim Parsons (which means I could never unthink about Sheldon dancing Michael Jackson-style) and mostly Michael Jackson music (except for Someone's Watching Me), is that really a surprise? If you do watch it, just don't expect anything spectacular.

The title, to me, seems pretty misleading. They're calling this "Michael Jackson's Halloween Special". While they do have a lot of references to Michael Jackson throughout this, Michael Jackson is not the main character. It's kind of like how the title, "The Legend of Zelda" confused people even me because the protagonist in the franchise is not Zelda but rather Link. Therefore, they could've called this "The Michael Jackson Clues Halloween Special" or "The Case of Michael Jackson Halloween Special".The story was unclear, it didn't seem to tell me exactly what the kids' quest was. Was it a quest for them to grow? Was it a quest for them to find a way to break the spell? It just seems all over the place.The characters are pretty annoying and contrived. The two protagonists' names both start with a V and I don't like it when main characters or a bunch of characters have names that start with the same first letter because then I get the characters mixed up.All of the jokes fall flat and didn't get anything but a little chuckle from me.The only redeeming quality about this sub-par cartoon is probably the little bit of action somewhere in the last 10 minutes of it.If Michael Jackson was still alive, he'd probably be pretty disappointed in this. I don't care if it's for kids. I don't even think kids over the age of 9 would be interested in it anyway. It's too silly for older kids. Younger kids might get a kick out of it.