'This Is It' Not Harrowing Enough, Say Michael Jackson Fans

Admit it, if you go and see This Is It next week, it'll only be to gawp in horror at Michael Jackson's nearly dead face.

No? Then you're not a Michael Jackson fan. An international coalition of ‘dedicated Michael Jackson fans' have set up a website trying to stop people from seeing This Is It on the basis that it deliberately covers up the truth about Michael Jackson's health.

And we agree! We hereby promise to not see This Is It until someone splices in a scene where Michael Jackson – dangerously thin and without his wig and blitzed on anaesthetic – weeps directly into the camera for 35 minutes. Maybe it'll be on the DVD.

Even factoring his death into the equation, 2009 has been a mess of failed potential for Michael Jackson. First his comeback concerts were postponed, then they were cancelled forever, then his posthumous tribute concert bit the dust as well. But at least there's This Is It, the film about Michael Jackson's comeback rehearsal that's being released next week. At least that's going off without a hitch.

True, it may have turned out that This Is It's eponymous single was actually an 18-year-old Puerto Rican song that Michael Jackson didn't really write by himself, but the movie's going off without a hitch. Without a hitch!

Well, apart from all the protesters and stuff. You see, a group of hardline Michael Jackson fans have decided to kick up a stink about This Is It on a website entitled This Is Not It. They're claiming that This Is It unfairly depicts Michael Jackson as a fun-loving man about town with a twinkle in his eye and a full set of working organs, when everyone knows that he was really a heavily-medicated, almost-dead waif with all the mobility of your ancient nan but none of her hair. Decrying the supposed cover-up, This Is Not It lists all the things that you won't see in the finished movie, including:

Michael Jackson's shocking sudden weight loss, reducing him to a mere 108 lbs (49kg) at the time of his death… Kenny Ortega, the director of both the tour and the movie, having to help Michael Jackson up the stairs, having to feed him and cut his food… Everyone around him witnessing to Michael Jackson looking confused and groggy, forgetting the lyrics of his own songs during rehearsals.

Yeah, rubbish, where's all that in the film, huh? Jesus, how are we supposed to celebrate the man's life if we can't even watch a harrowing sequence involving a film director having to cut up meals for a nightmarish, barely-there man who most closely resembles the Sloth guy from Seven? Huh? Didn't you idiots even know that ‘mind-scarring revulsion' is an officially-mandated stage of grief? Christ, you people make us sick.

But, still, This Is Not It's plan is doomed to failure. That footage will never be included in the final movie, because the posters have all been printed up and it'd be inordinately expensive to change the title of This Is It to This Is… Oh My God, What's Wrong With His Face? at this late stage.

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