Review: Dancing around controversy, the empathetic 'Michael' bows out before getting dark

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Let’s agree on two things.First, Michael Jackson was one of the greatest pop artists of the 20th century.

Your personal favorite may be different and that’s fine, but there’s no arguing that “Thriller” remains the top-selling album on the planet.Second, Michael Jackson was, allegedly, a serial sexual abuser of children.

These circumstances don’t contradict each other — they coexist and they hurt.Our hearts break for the victims even as Michael’s music is fused to our souls.

If there’s a way to heal that wound, I’d love to hear it myself.Once we’ve shaken hands on this unavoidable tension, we can wrestle with Antoine Fuqua’s “Michael,” an open-hearted biopic of Jackson, extending from his boyhood in Gary, Ind., to the late-’80s tour for “Bad.” The narrow scope is intentional.The two victims in the 2019 documentary “Leaving Neverland” contend that their abuse began shortly after; a third became the first to publicly accuse the singer of molestation in 1993.

Ending the movie in 1988 allows “Michael” to hail the parts of his story that are worth celebrating — the force of talent and drive that propelled a blue-collar family into global superstardom, broke barriers preventing Black artists from receiving equal treatment on MTV and, for a moment, really did seem like it might unify the world — while not outright lying to the audience that he was always a hero.But no, it doesn’t mention the allegations at all.

Thus, we get a story of Michael’s independence from his domineering father, Joe (Colman Domingo), as witnessed by those who were there.Six Jackson family members are credited as producers and still seem to be grappling with how their freakishly gifted and damaged relative came to exist.

(Meanwhile, there’s no Janet, not even onscreen in the background or mentioned at all.) The Jacksons’ biological and, presumably, financia...