Moonwalker

Plot synopsis:
The movie starts with Michael Jackson singing his hit song "Man in the Mirror." After that song is over a montage starts of Michael as a kid and works it's way up to present day. After the montage is over, the music video for "Bad" is being remade by various child performers with the name "Badder." After the video is over, the young Michael is walking out of the builiding he is in. Outside, a claymation tourbus pulls up to the builiding. A large cloud of mist is seen on both sides of the builiding and when young Michael walks through, he turns back into present day Michael. The people in the tourbus spots him and begin to chase him.After awhile of chasing, Michael accidently runs into an area where they are filming a movie. The director yells at him and the two actors decide to chase him as well. Michael manages to hide in a wardrobe room and sneak out dressed as a bunny, riding away on a bicycle. The paparazzi soon realize what happened and begin to chase Michael again. Michael's bike shifts into a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and the music video for "Speed Demon" begins. After Michael is sure he has lost his fans he stops in the desert and take off his bunny suit and sets in on a rock. He starts to walk away when something taps him on the shoulder. The bunny suit has come alive and it seems to challenge Michael to a dance contest. After a little dancing, a police officer taps Michael on the shoulder and gives him a ticket, Michael also noticed that the bunny has vanished. Michael gets on his motercycle and just before he rides away, the mountain in front of him takes shape of the bunny and winks at him. Michael smiles back and drives away. Then the music video for "Leave Me Alone" starts.Once the "Leave Me Alone" segment is over, the quite rare, very long "Smooth Criminal" video begins. We see a full moon and three little kids on a rooftop looking at a builiding. Sean (Sean Lennon), Katie (Kellie Parker), and Zeke (Brandon Quintin Adams). Michael steps out of the builiding they are looking at and looks up at the sky. Then we see someone cracking a peanut in his hands, and Michael looks over to them and dodges quickly as henchmen start shooting at him. The two boys in fright, run away, and Katie stays behind frozen. She starts shouting Michael's name and then we go to a flashback.We see Katie, Sean, and Zeke playing in a field with a soccer ball and along with Katie's dog Skipper. Someone kicks the ball and Skipper runs over, picks it up with his mouth and runs into the woods. Michael goes to look for him and Katie comes along with him. They call out to Skipper who is no where to be seen. They soon find a section of the woods covered with nothing but spiderwebs and locate a secret tunnel inside a rock. They both follow it trying to be as quiet as possible. When they see people, they stop on a staircase and look to see what they are talking about. They overhear someone who plans to get every child in the world hooked on drugs. The villan identifies himself as Franky LiDeo (Joe Pesci). Named Mr. Big for short. Katie sees a spider about to crawl on her arm and starts to scream. Mr. Big sees them and sends his gunmen after them.We go back to the building where Michael is trying to dodge the bullets being shot at him. After the gunmen stop shooting, we see that Michael has gotten away and is running for his life. Katie notices this and runs off the building to find her two friends. After a while of running, Michael is cornered in a dead end and Mr. Big and his guards go to kill him when Michael's lucky star goes by. His lucky star can make him do anything or turn into anything. Michael turns himself into a super fast car and speeds past his enemies, escaping.We now see Katie entering an abandoned club, and Sean and Zeke are both hiding there and greet her. They all claim Michael told them to meet him there earlier. They leave the club to make sure they are at the right place, and they run behind a fence when they hear someone coming. Katie looks over and sees Michael transforming back into human form. She is in shock and after she gets better, they all look up and see him entering the club. A burst of white light flashes and Michael enters. It turns out to be a lively, crowded, gangster-infested 1930s American nightclub. Michael is surprised by this, and everyone in there is surprised to see him. Michael feels it is his job to entertain them, and so, he performs his hit song, "Smooth Criminal". Despite the fact that the song "Smooth Criminal" is four minutes and seventeen seconds, this scene is dragged out to be about ten minutes long. Towards the end of Michael's exciting performance, Katie is kidnapped by Mr. Big while Sean and Zeke are still hiding behind the fence. Michael runs out to find what happened and they all go looking for her.They find Mr. Big's lair and enter trying to be as quiet as possible. Sean and Zeke stop while Michael goes ahead. Then a metal door closes behind him, separating them. Michael runs to the center of the room and the boys go to the roof. A spotlight hits Michael and follows him until he is cornered. Then all the gunmen come out and point their guns at him, and two guards go infront of him. We hear Katie screaming as she is coming up an elevator. Mr. Big has a hold of her and is hitting her several times. Michael tries to go to her but the guards hold him back. Mr. Big reveals that he "just wants to get everybod high, " and is about to inject Katie with a drug when she scratches his face and runs to Michael. At the same time, the guard takes the back of his gun, hits Michael once in the stomach and once in the face. Giving him a concussion. Mr. Big catches Katie and pulls her back, turns Michael over and kicks him once in the chest. Michael is on the floor in pain and Katie tries to crawl away but is stoppped, Mr. Big orders the men to kill her first. Michael screams at him to leave her alone when his lucky star flies by and he transforms into a giant robot! Mr. Big manages to escape after Michael has killed all of the guards. Including the guard that was keeping Sean and Zeke on the roof. Michael then turns himself into a space ship and kills Mr. Big when he tries to kill him with a cannon. The kids are confused as to why they were left behind and say goodbye to Michael as he flies away thinking they would never see him again.We then see the kids sitting on a bench in the street saying how much they miss him. Katie gets up to sit in a corner and she says to herself that she wishes he would come back. Just then we see mist and Michael appears out of nowhere. They all see him and run to him in happiness. He tells them to follow him and he leads them to the club, informing them that there is a surprise in store. Once again, a burst of white light flashes when they enter. It is at this point, when the quite rare, very long "Smooth Criminal" video ends, and the "Come Together" sequence begins. This is where the kids get Skipper back, and Michael performs his closing song "Come Together."

Tags: neo noir, cult, psychedelic

Review:
Michael Jackson may be considered a freak these days, but, after all, this was the man who gave us Thriller (considered by many to be the greatest music video of all time) and set trends with Billie Jean and Beat It.
With Moonwalker, he and the filmmakers and artists who collaborated with him once again took his music and dance moves to create some vividly entertaining stuff, incorporating claymation, special effects, live performance footage, and even self-parody (the "Badder" sequence).
Not because of Michael Jackson but of the good old times I remembered back than when I went to his concerts, enjoying music and dancing.
He likes Michael Jackson as well and I know he will love this movie just as I did when I was a kid.
Some of it has subtle messages about MJ's feeling towards the press and also the obvious message of drugs are bad m'kay.Visually impressive but of course this is all about Michael Jackson so unless you remotely like MJ in anyway then you are going to hate this and find it boring.
Some may call MJ an egotist for consenting to the making of this movie BUT MJ and most of his fans would say that he made it for the fans which if true is really nice of him.The actual feature film bit when it finally starts is only on for 20 minutes or so excluding the Smooth Criminal sequence and Joe Pesci is convincing as a psychopathic all powerful drug lord.
Nah, Joe Pesci's character ranted that he wanted people to know it is he who is supplying drugs etc so i dunno, maybe he just hates MJ's music.Lots of cool things in this like MJ turning into a car and a robot and the whole Speed Demon sequence.
Also, the director must have had the patience of a saint when it came to filming the kiddy Bad sequence as usually directors hate working with one kid let alone a whole bunch of them performing a complex dance scene.Bottom line, this movie is for people who like MJ on one level or another (which i think is most people).
Besides from the seeing the new "This Is It" and saying Im a huge Michael Jackson fan, I thought I would prove it and see a movie he actually did back in his time.
It's a kind of strange combination of a bio of Michael Jackson, a collection of musical vignettes, and a story about a super hero fighting to save some little kids.
The vignettes are good (especially Speed Demon), but the best part of this movie is the super hero segment, in which Michael Jackson turns into a car, a robot, and finally a spaceship (and it's just as weird as it sounds).
Joe Pesci is hilarious, and has enough cool imagery and great music to entertain throughout!The real gem however is the incredible "Smooth Criminal" video, which makes the movie worth owning for that part alone!.
This movie is exciting,daring and the music is very good.The movie Moonwalker was meant to coincide with the album Bad(1987).I have Bad.It is excellent(*****).The movie begins with Michael Jackson performing"Man In The Mirror"on stage.then,it shows a history of Michael,from his early days in the Jackson 5 right up to the Bad era.
Oh,and Badder is good too(Badder is a music video parody of the music video for Bad the single).It then shows the Speed Demon video.The song and the video are very,very good indeed.Same for leave me alone,which appears after.Then it shows the movie Moonwalker.after a few minutes,he plays smooth criminal in a club called club 30s.like it when he does the lean.anyway,nice to see you.bye bye..
Moonwalker by Michael Jackson is a real adventure film for the whole family!Before the real story of the movie starts, we get a performance of the Bad Tour (Man In The Mirror), and it kicks off a great movie.
After a few Music Videos also (Speed Demon, Leave Me Alone, etc.) the story starts.The plot is basically that Michael and his 3 friends (who are kids) are being chased by the bad guy of the story "Mr. Big", because they discovered his evil plans of getting children all over the world hocked on drugs.
But then one of the kids get kidnapped by Mr. Big, and Michael will haft to save her before she gets a drug addict.During the movie we see special effects not only amazing for those days standards, but also impressive today.
The second is a retrospective on Michael Jackson's career, with clips from his music videos and performances from his early career to his "Bad" days (which is the era when the movie was made, and it shows).
The fourth part is a mini-movie which features Michael Jackson escaping from maniacal fans and press by racing a motorcycle as a rabbit-man and eventually doing a dance duel with him (you really need to see it to believe it).
The fifth is a video for "Leave Me Alone", and the sixth and final part is a noir/sci-fi film where Michael and three young kids on the streets who have befriended him try to escape a drug lord (Joe Pesci) who wants Michael's head after the latter discovers his plans to get all kids addicted to drugs."Moonwalker" never made it to theatres in the US (it did, however, in Europe and South America), but that didn't stop the VHS release to be sold in over 800,000 copies within a year of the movie's release.
I won't spoil the rest of the movie for you, but these are my favourite parts.If you are a Michael Jackson fan then this belongs in your collection for sure.
The music in this movie is probably the best Michael Jackson has ever done.
Like another poster pointed out, it was basically a really long music video for the album "Bad" as just about all the songs from the movie appear on that album.
The bits dealing with Michael's younger years are truly fun, and so are some of the special effects throughout (like Will Vinton's work in "Speed Demon"), but the centrepiece of the short film "Smooth Criminal" (pint-sized villain Joe Pesci, as "Lideo" [get it?], wants to get all the children in the world hooked on drugs, and guess who has to stop him?
Clue: His name appears 45 times in the credits) doesn't work, in part because the story stops dead to allow for the "Smooth Criminal" video to be shown in its entirety.The movie's unending and unquestioning adoration of Michael Jackson gets its fullest flower there, although the video for "Leave Me Alone" (in which he basically exploits his life in song while at the same time telling us to go away, something he would later take even further in "Stop Questioning Me" and "Black or White," which set new standards for self-serving BS topped only by Geri Halliwell and Jennifer Lopez) comes close.
If you are a Michael Jackson fan, this is a MUST!!But for those of you who are not big fans, (LIKE THE REVIEWER BEFORE ME) you will not appreciate it.It has no real story, except for the main chunk in the middle which has a bit of a plot, but it's pretty ridiculous.I'll use this example: When you watch an old school Kung-Fu movie from Asia....do you watch it for the acting, style and plot??Normally NO!!
I would like to find better songs of Michael Jackson as I literary hated all of his other videos-clips.
Great Movie For All You Michael Jackson Fans!.
I am a big fan of Michael Jackson and I would like to say this movie is good and exciting to watch.
Great movie for all you Michael Jackson fans!Final Rating: 9 out of 10.
Although I'm fairly sure that if I was a bad gangsta' type and some 10 year old started giving me attitude and asking me `who's bad?' I'd probably get quite angry and shoot him, or at least complain to his parents.It was also quite hard to follow the story, but here's what I could understand: The Michael Jackson character is a nice guy who is wanted by the police, (he's a smooth criminal you see, probably like Keyser Soze), but there's an even badder (or should that be gooder, if bad means good) villain called Mr Big, who tries to get some kids hooked on drugs.
If you've enjoyed either of those experiences or are a fan of Michael Jackson then I recommend Moonwalker.This film is good!.
The 30-minute movie in the middle - with Joe Pesci as the evil drug dealer- is a great chunk of celluloid, and probably has some of the best music Bruce Broughton has written for a film, next to "The Rescuers Down Under.".
But I can't really complain about this seeing as it is Michaels Jacksons songs, many of which coming from his prime in the 80's.Also the music videos that accompany the songs are usually pretty cool.
While I like this movie a lot, I cringe every time I see Michael Jackson doing egotistical or strange things like the actions featured in this film.
I was a kid!To watch it now, it looks cheesy, bad special effects, acting etc, and I'm much older now, so it doesn't appeal anymore.But I still give this movie a high rating because of how it made me feel when I was a kid, Michael Jackson was my hero before I saw this move, and he was my hero after I saw it.The special effects, although bad by todays standards, were totally original, I also loved the lead in with all the history before the music starts, the great scene done with claymation figures chasing Michael, and the great song "Speed Demon" that it leads into.I think this movie has been misinterpreted, personally I think it is a classic, a great movie for kids (in my day it was anyway) because for a child, it is far more spectacular.8 out of 10.
If you like Michael Jackson, this is the movie for you.
If not - then don't bother...Moonwalker is full of cringe worthy "Michael - get away from those children" moments - but in its defence - the "Smooth Criminal" is awesome - cool choreography, cool song and some violence (what more could you ask for!); the action scenes where Michael transforms into a rocket ship shoots stuff makes you feel on acid and the "Leave Me Alone" clip makes Jacko look more bizarre.Joe Pesci is a horrible stereotype of a drug baron - wanting to get kids addicted to crack (of course!).
OK,well what can i say.If i had joined this site a few years ago i would have given this a higher rating.Ill talk about the good points of the film first.Its a wonderful piece of fantasy,the story is to be honest not great,but the film unravels like a dream,which is basically what it is,one long dream sequence,broken with some amazing musical pieces.The whole(random) sequence with Jacko going through the film studios is great.The special effects overall are pretty amazing and still look fairly convincing today(much more convincing than Jacko's defence case).This brings me to the films downfall though.It has nothing to do with the making of it,the production,the ideas,the script,nothing.It is all because it IS a Michael Jackson film that i feel i can only score this four now.I mean really,Michael Jackson coming to Earth to save the kids of the world......seems a bit raw now to say the least.I mean most of the characters are young kids.Michael allies with the young kids.HMMMM,seems a bit seedy now.Just hope the young actors and actresses had separate trailers on set,get me?I mean perhaps if people had known what they know now then,this film would never have been made.
When you look back it does seem the young kids thing has always been there with Michael Jackson,and present events mean this once classic film now leaves a bad taste in your mouth..
Michael Jackson delivered us an glorified an 1hr 45min long compilation of various clips of his work and it bares no significance to the title and within it self didn't live up to the narrative that supposed to be the origin of his iconic dance instead of this slap dash mess of an movie where the main action doesn't heat up until the 45 min mark before then you would have fallen asleep due to the boredom of the first 2 acts of the movie where as his short movie thriller was pure magic that reduced to an mini clip but the montage sequence had armature photo shop FX and kids trying to be bad was awful with worst choreography but I couldn't watch the entire movie but skip to the 45 min mark there is no real redeemed quality what so ever If I want to see a film about moonwalking I'd rather watch Neil Armstrong actually doing it I can't rate it higher but giving it an 4 out of 10.frankie croft smales.
"Moonwalker" is often called as a motion picture but in reality is a mix between a nonsense movie with a collection of Michael Jackson's video clips.
As a video collection with all the best clips of MJ it goes very admirably; but as a film it gets trapped in a never ending and confusing story where things happen for no reason specifically.The montage with excerpts of Jackson's clips is very good to watch leaving the audience expecting for more.
Towards the end of the movie Jackson will be transformed (out of the blue) into a robot just like the Power Rangers.Jackson's fans will love the whole material but the movie aficionados will not enjoy that much specially if they think that this is not a musical film (which is supposed to be and it could have been a great one if it have a plot).
I'm not a big Michael Jackson fan, and some of his music is cheesy, but when does a good one, it's cool, and a lot of the songs in the movie is cool, such as smooth criminal, and speed demon.Quite a few scenes suck big time, like a bunch of children doing the song 'Bad',  and nearly all the scenes which involve the three child actors/ress, oh and when he turns in to a space ship (go figure), but there are scenes which are really good, such as when he's dancing to smooth criminal, and when he turns into a car (it's not a cheesy as the space ship thing), and Leave me alone (apart from the elephant man scene, which I think was dis-tasteful,).It maybe an excuse to sell more records, but hey 99% of kids films, is an excuse to sell products related to the film.It's not a classic, but it's okay to watch when there's nothing else on..
Watch the movie.Moonwalker is fun for the first half hour, seeing Michael's success and all his hard work really makes his fans appreciate him once again.
I loved Moonwalker as a kid, I still watch it for fun to this day, but it's not the best movie by any means, it's pretty silly, but it's all good if you're a Michael Jackson fan as well.7/10.
Moonwalker is probably not the film to watch if you're not a Michael Jackson fan.
Songs used in Moonwalker include Man in the Mirror (Opening Live Performance), Bad (Badder Segment), Speed Demon (Claymation and Live Action Segment), Smooth Criminal (Live Action Short Film), and Come Together ("Live" Performance).Plot Overview: Michael receives unexplainable (but very useful) powers from a recurring shooting star.
I mean the bit in the middle with Joe Pesci as the bad guy, and Michael Jackson as the hero, is so absurd.But the collection of video clips, live performances, and montages is great !
I mean the bit in the middle with Joe Pesci as the bad guy, and Michael Jackson as the hero, is so absurd.But the collection of video clips, live performances, and montages is great !
Yeah.But besides the bizarre robot scene, it's a very good movie, and any Michael Jackson fan will enjoy both the Smooth Criminal music video and the movie..
What I like here too is that it never shows any shameful material and can be watched by kids easily.Without Mr Michael Jackson the universe of music videos would be rather poor.
"HIStory I", "HIStory II", and "Moonwalker" are all great, though only "Moonwalker" is more like one movie (with a solid "Smooth Criminal" theme, "paparazzi" topic, and a few weird spoofs and twists).Being no fan of MJ I can still give this "film...
Michael Jackson Moonwalker A Movie Like No Other..
They only said such bad things cause they dont like Michael jackson or his music!!
So at the end of the video, I found out that there was a movie that existed and I was dying to check it out since I love Michael Jackson!Anyways I thought the movie was quite good, I love dancing and embarrassingly singing the words out loud to his songs.
So please go." Now the movie where Michael Jackson fights the drug-dealers, was the most talked-about part of the film.
Overall: Michael Jackson is a smooth criminal, but his movie was nowhere near that.
As a not-particularly Michael Jackson fan, but as someone who nonetheless quick likes a moderate amount of the music and some of the dancing here, a fair amount of Moonwalker holds my attention.
I first saw this when they showed this around easter time 1993/4 and didn't think much of it then, I bought this on DVD last summer when I started getting into Michael Jackson (I liked his music before) and enjoyed it more now I am older.
I am a big fan of Michael Jackson and have watched Moonwalker multiple times through my life since about the age of 10.