Rotten Tomatoes.
Wesley Morris, NYT:
Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun Times:
Inkoo Kang, Slate:
Matt Zoller Seitz, via New York Magazine:
How Leaving Neverland Does a Disservice to Michael Jackson's Accusers vis Slate
I didn't see a review thread. Documentary premiers on HBO March 3rd, and it's two parts.
Also, please see thread marks for countering opinions as well as a note on the nude child art books found during the Neverland raid in the early 2000s.
Wesley Morris, NYT:
I've seen Wade Robson, a doll-faced Michael Jackson impersonator from Brisbane, Australia, say he was 7 when Michael began abusing him, describing a grim scenario in which he was naked on all fours at the edge of the bed, poised — trapped — between his idol, who was masturbating to him, and a cutout of Peter Pan.
I've heard all of this — and a distressing deal more — by the time the documentary gets to the part where Jackson allegedly takes Safechuck shopping for a ring. But there's something about the way the filmmakers reserve this scene for the back end of Part 1 that ices your bones, something about the way an adult Safechuck doesn't seem to want to go back there. But here he is, talking in a TV documentary about the vows he says that he and Jackson exchanged. Here he is, forlorn, holding the ring that he's kept, all this time, in a handsome box.
The story of the ring and the vows feels as graphic as the memories of masturbation and French kissing and nipple tweaking. If you happen to be the sort of person who'd try to balance, say, the multiple counts of child molestation Jackson was charged with in 2003 and acquitted of later with extenuating details from Jackson's biography (Wasn't heabused and too famous too soon and prematurely sexualized? He never had a childhood! He's still a child!), if you partook in the steady diet of fluffy news stories about Jackson and some little boy (often identified as "Jackson's friend") and thought mostly that they were cute or banal and that Jackson just related to kids as kids — like, platonically — if you thought that he couldn't know there was a real difference between adult passion and child's play, then perhaps you'll find Safechuck's memory of the ring particularly shattering. I did. It's so private and wrong, not just to us but clearly to Jackson, who makes up a story at the jewelry store that the ring is for a woman, even though Safechuck is there by his side.
He knew.
Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun Times:
Having seen the devastating and undeniably persuasive film, I can't say with 100 percent certainty Jackson molested the alleged victims — but at the very least, the VERY least, we're reminded of how bizarre it was for this man to have cultivated such close relationships with a number of boys, even as his legions of fans and his supporters rationalized it by saying Jackson was just like Peter Pan and he had the soul of a child and he was an innocent who didn't want to grow up.
What a load of … nonsense.
Inkoo Kang, Slate:
The first half of Leaving Neverland is propelled by dread, as Robson and Safechuck, then child performers and Jackson impersonators, near the orbit of the singer and are subsequently groomed and trained for sex acts. (The details are unsparing; prepare yourself.) The latter half of the documentary is spurred by anticipation, as we learn how the victims extricate themselves from Jackson's influence and gradually recognize their abuse for what it was. In their 20s, Robson and Safechuck suffered from panic attacks and turned to drug use without comprehending the role that sexual assault played in their then-inexplicable distress. (Their stories, about both Jackson's M.O. and the aftereffects thereof, are remarkably similar.) Leaving Neverland also benefits from Robson's extreme candor. He attributes his resolve to defend Jackson in court to a multitude of factors, including his sympathy for the singer's young children, lingering loyalty to the man who had inspired and boosted his dancing career, and fear that his life might be ruined too in the process. And though the documentary doesn't explore this possibility, it's plausible that Robson and Safechuck's gender played a role in their reluctance to speak out against Jackson too, given that male victims are generally afforded much less support than female ones. It wasn't until Robson and Safechuck became fathers themselves that the last traces of their one-time affection for Jackson completely disappeared.
Matt Zoller Seitz, via New York Magazine:
We never see the acts that James Safechuck and Wade Robson say they endured as minors while visiting Jackson's Neverland Ranch and Century City apartment, but these are described in such detail that viewers may be seized by a new impulse: to look away from what they're hearing. Mutual masturbation; oral sex; penetration; regular exposure to orgies and porn; emotional abuse characterized as special attention: Jackson is accused of all this and more. Safechuck and Robson were children when Jackson "discovered" them — Robson in Brisbane, Australia, where the boy had been performing with a kids' dance troupe; Safechuck in Los Angeles, on the set of a beloved Pepsi ad about a small boy exploring Jackson's backstage dressing room and doting on his gloves and hat. Safechuck was 9. Robson was 7. As these now-adult men speak of what they saw and did in in the late 1980s and early '90s — the era when they say Jackson groomed them — they talk slowly and softly, doubling back to add details or amend descriptions. Years ago, Robson testified in court and Safechuck publicly supported the singer, both countering other protégés who'd accused Jackson of crimes. They know full well that a lot of people watching Leaving Neverland will reflexively disbelieve them because their new testimony contradicts what came before (and because they each unsuccessfully sued Jackson's estate in the years after his death). They know that people who have never experienced abuse won't understand how kids can love their tormentors and wish to protect them.
How Leaving Neverland Does a Disservice to Michael Jackson's Accusers vis Slate
It is worth noting, though, that Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed never sought comment from the Jackson estate on the devastating claims made by the film's two subjects, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who both allege that Jackson sexually abused them as children. Reed says the film's narrow scope—a tightly framed look at the lives of two boys and their families as they are seduced into Jackson's bizarre, rarefied, possibly predatory orbit—was a creative decision.
That one-sidedness has less to do with the absence of Jackson's family than with the film's lack of candor regarding complicating information about Robson, Safechuck, and two of Jackson's previous accusers. Viewers inclined to regard the allegations against Jackson with skepticism will find these holes leave room for their misgivings to grow. In glossing over, and sometimes entirely excluding, elements of the factual record, the documentary hobbles its chances to convince skeptics that these men are telling the truth. This misstep—one that presumably stems from a desire to protect Robson and Safechuck—actually does a grave disservice to both men, whose stories I believe.
I didn't see a review thread. Documentary premiers on HBO March 3rd, and it's two parts.
Also, please see thread marks for countering opinions as well as a note on the nude child art books found during the Neverland raid in the early 2000s.
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