The boy, the man, the myth

The TV movie “Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story,” premiering tonight on VH1, concerns the last 21 years in the life of the King of Pop. That’s enough time for a newborn to become a responsible adult -- a transition that Jackson, who turns 46 at the end of the month, has somehow yet to achieve.

Directed by Allan Moyle (who made the pop oddities “Times Square” and “Pump Up the Volume”), “Man in the Mirror” is no worse than most television biopics and better than many, though in terms of valuable human activity, watching a TV movie about Michael Jackson must rank somewhere below following the life of the actual person. The film is stylish, sometimes to a fault, masking with dramatic editing and camerawork the fact it contains no music by Michael Jackson.

Though it leaves the viewer room to believe whatever bad or good things he or she may have believed of Jackson coming in, it goes pretty easy on him overall, making him out to be more of a sad victim than, say, a perverted creep. It has to, in a way, given that Jackson’s personal life is still more the stuff of rumor than of document, and given also the niceties of libel law.

The aim of any biopic is to simplify and reenact the facts of a life, in a way that renders its subject at once more recognizably human and, because human, more unknowably deep. They’re like medieval mystery plays, for the new religion of celebrity. That the story is already known to the audience is what gives it its ritual power -- it’s all anticipation. In “Man in the Mirror,” we await the embodiment of signal moments: the Night of the Flaming Hair, the Creation of Neverland, the First Accusation of Impropriety, the Courting of the Daughter of the King, the Pregnancies of the Nurse, the Naked Police Photos, the Second Accusation of Impropriety, the Dangling of the Infant, the Backfiring Documentary, the Raid on Neverland, the Standing on the Car, and so on.

A little stands for a lot: When one of Lisa’s children accidentally bops him on the nose (“Oh my nose,” says Michael, running to the mirror), we are meant to consider the history of that appendage, its whittling away to nothing. When Jackson’s dermatologist says, “Michael, this is my assistant, Debbie,” we know just what’s coming. (We who have spent any time in supermarket checkout lines, at least.) It doesn’t really matter that such films have little drama, because they are pageants.

For reasons of time, budget and symbolic clarity, Jackson’s life is reduced to a few key players, real and invented. There is his family: the mother (concerned yet clueless) and father (cleaning his Uzi), the brothers (undifferentiated), sisters Janet (she calls him Peter, he calls her Tink) and LaToya (the genuine item, in an old news clip, betraying him like Judas). There are the managers: “Ziggy” -- white, cigar-sporting, concerned with money -- and “Bobby,” who follows him and whose shaved head and regal bearing are perhaps meant to vaguely suggest the Nation of Islam, with whom Jackson has recently associated himself. And there is Elizabeth Taylor, the best of his friends who are not pre-adolescent boys (“Michael, I have flown over 10,000 miles just to be able to look at you to say how much I love you”).

Diana Ross appears in his dreams (“Michael, listen to me, you are going to be a big star, but there will be hurt and pain, always.... Follow your heart, Michael, follow your heart, follow your heart”). And there are the fans, perhaps his truest family. “Today I choose love,” he declares at the film’s weirdly inspirational ending, “and I will believe in my fans the way my fans believe in me.”

As Jackson, Flex Alexander -- star of the UPN sitcom “One on One” and formerly a dancer and/or choreographer for the likes of Salt N’ Pepa, Queen Latifah and Mary J. Blige -- is as big a celebrity as the production has to offer, and he effectively renders the man-child Michael across a range of ages and hairstyles with a mix of fey fragility and creepy enthusiasm. He can manage the spins, the moonwalking and the signature poses that copyright law can’t keep the filmmakers from employing.

Of course, there are places he can’t go: Where Jackson nowadays looks like something out of a Hammer horror movie -- emaciated, desiccated, undead -- Alexander in his pancake makeup and red lipstick just looks like a kind of demented mime. And though the actor does a creditable job of being the Michael Jackson you might imagine, the fact is that whatever Michael Jackson you can imagine will fall short of the real thing. When the actual Jackson is glimpsed in news footage (the baby-dangling incident), his bearing, even from afar, is stranger than any mere actor could convey, and infinitely more fascinating.

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‘Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story’

Where: VH1

When: 9 to 11 tonight

Flex Alexander...Michael Jackson

Eugene Clark...Bobby

Peter Onorati...Ziggy

Krista Rae...Lisa Marie Presley

April Telek...Debbie Rowe

Executive producers, Jon Katzman, John Morayniss and Joey Plager. Director, Allan Moyle. Writer, Claudia Salter.