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If you've seen the video for “Smooth Criminal,” you've seen the best of Moonwalker, but you haven't seen it all, and by “all” I don't mean the rest of the film, but the kind of sight that merits the expression 'now I've seen it all' (and this isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's weird, but mostly good-weird); coincidentally, these things all happen during the segment containing “Smooth Criminal” — for example, when Michael Jackson transforms into a sports car, a giant robot, and a spaceship (in that order), metamorphoses that result from a trio of children making wishes to various shooting stars.
An pseudo-Autobot hero requires a Decepticon-like villain, and Frankie 'Mr. Big' Lideo (Joe Pesci) is meaner than Megatron himself: an Aggressive Drug Dealer who not only orders his henchmen to hang around parks and schools, but also wants kids to stop praying at school. Aside from being a proponent of church-state separation, Mr. Big is a practitioner of corporal punishment.
Ignoring black and white morality (drugs: bad, religion: good), this really is the appropriate tone for the material; what we have here is basically a fairy tale with a very effective ogre — Pesci's performance was, and dare I say, still is, nightmare fuel for young children.
Speaking of children, one might wonder why these three kids, who in a flashback are seen playing happily in a meadow with Michael, are in the 'present' apparently homeless, but that would be besides the point — particularly because the entire thing is a pretty pointless exercise.
Michael clearly expected the public to take Moonwalker as seriously as he took himself; that is, not too much. Accordingly, the second best segment of the film is "Badder," a parody of the Bad video with children taking on the roles from the original clip.
Finally we have “Speed Demon”, which I'm sure isn't anyone's favorite song, but it's accompanied here by a jubilant mix of live-action and claymation that culminates in another of the film's high points: a dance off between Michael and an anthropomorphic rabbit named Spike.
Moonwalker also includes “Leave Me Alone”, which unlike the segments mentioned above, is presented outside of any narrative context — which would otherwise be redundant, given that the song and video tell a complete and independent story. Moonwalker's intro (“Man in the Mirror,” “Retrospective”) and coda (“Come Together,” end credits) are essentially filler, but everything in between is memorable one way or another.
MOONWALKER
If you've seen the video for “Smooth Criminal,” you've seen the best of Moonwalker, but you haven't seen it all, and by “all” I don't mean the rest of the film, but the kind of sight that merits the expression 'now I've seen it all' (and this isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's weird, but mostly good-weird); coincidentally, these things all happen during the segment containing “Smooth Criminal” — for example, when Michael Jackson transforms into a sports car, a giant robot, and a spaceship (in that order), metamorphoses that result from a trio of children making wishes to various shooting stars.
An pseudo-Autobot hero requires a Decepticon-like villain, and Frankie 'Mr. Big' Lideo (Joe Pesci) is meaner than Megatron himself: an Aggressive Drug Dealer who not only orders his henchmen to hang around parks and schools, but also wants kids to stop praying at school. Aside from being a proponent of church-state separation, Mr. Big is a practitioner of corporal punishment.
Ignoring black and white morality (drugs: bad, religion: good), this really is the appropriate tone for the material; what we have here is basically a fairy tale with a very effective ogre — Pesci's performance was, and dare I say, still is, nightmare fuel for young children.
Speaking of children, one might wonder why these three kids, who in a flashback are seen playing happily in a meadow with Michael, are in the 'present' apparently homeless, but that would be besides the point — particularly because the entire thing is a pretty pointless exercise.
Michael clearly expected the public to take Moonwalker as seriously as he took himself; that is, not too much. Accordingly, the second best segment of the film is "Badder," a parody of the Bad video with children taking on the roles from the original clip.
Finally we have “Speed Demon”, which I'm sure isn't anyone's favorite song, but it's accompanied here by a jubilant mix of live-action and claymation that culminates in another of the film's high points: a dance off between Michael and an anthropomorphic rabbit named Spike.
Moonwalker also includes “Leave Me Alone”, which unlike the segments mentioned above, is presented outside of any narrative context — which would otherwise be redundant, given that the song and video tell a complete and independent story. Moonwalker's intro (“Man in the Mirror,” “Retrospective”) and coda (“Come Together,” end credits) are essentially filler, but everything in between is memorable one way or another.