Popular reviews

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  Review by karsten 75

  Part 2, final thoughts:
  I seriously cannot wrap my head around the idea of not believing these men. My anger towards this is so much greater than it would have been had I seen this at Sundance because just seeing the reactions to this documentary prove how much progress needs to be made. Somebody'll probably comment on this like "BUT UHH WHAT ABOUT THE EVIDENCE"

  Dog, who in their right minds would make these kinds of things up, who would put themselves out there to the public and reveal a story this detailed and vulnerable. For money and attention? Yeah I'm sure they absolutely love the aggressive amount of hate and threats that have come their way since the release…

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  Review by Ariel Gardner ★★★★ 26

  I went to Neverland Ranch in 2003, around the time the court cases were going on. I was about 13. It wasn’t a special invite from MJ or anything. It was for a Disney premiere screening of “Pirates of the Carribean” that my dad pulled an invite to. Not sure why they held a big event there while Jackson was AWOL dealing with the allegations, but uh, there we were.

  Anyway, you get there and you get on a little train that takes you past the main house, which was empty, to the central area with the movie theater and everything.

  You get off at a little train station that was serving free pastries and ice cream. I asked how…

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★ 69

  Warning: This review — like the film it describes — contains frank discussion of sex abuse involving children. Please read with caution.

  It may not be much of a secret that Michael Jackson acted inappropriately with a number of young boys, but there’s no way to prepare yourself for the sickening forensic details presented in Dan Reed’s four-hour exposé. It’s one thing to be vaguely aware of the various allegations that were made against the King of Pop; the asterisks that will always be next to the late mega-star’s name. It’s quite another to hear the horrifyingly lucid testimony that stretches across the entire duration of “Leaving Neverland,” as two of Jackson’s most repeat victims bravely lay bare how a…

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  Review by josh lewis 11

  a harrowing document of idolization, emotional manipulation and sexual abuse. not even sure how one goes about rating something like this. that bit about him rewarding james with rings and covering it up by telling the jewelry store employees that they were really shopping for women but james' fingers were comparable in size and that's why he was trying them on? just devastating. and in public! i'll confess to being quite young when the first two rounds of allegations came out so i mostly ingested them through pop culture and vague acknowledgements when his name came up. but that the broader public simply went along with the intentionally (and cynically) crafted image of himself as some sort of overgrown child…

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  Review by Will Walker ½ 48

  3 months in and we already have the worst film of 2019.

  Dinesh D'Souza is green with envy at Dan Reed's protracted, emotionally manipulative, nonsensical, contradictory propaganda piece. There's a reason why there was nobody involved in the court case in this documentary, there's a reason why there's nobody with specific knowledge of the evidence involved in the documentary, there's a reason why Dan Reed refused to interview Corey Feldman (Maybe the most outspoken voice against child molestation in all of Hollywood) or Emmanuel Lewis or Macaulay Culkin or Brett Barnes or any of the alleged victims who maintained Michael's innocence (Who he he goes on record calling "loyalists", which if his claims were true, is pretty damn close to…

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  Review by matt lynch 19

  As crushing and awful as you've heard, less a documentary than a testimonial. No rating seems appropriate.

  One complaint: enough with the drone shots. They don't even belong in here at all, unless it's essential that we see what the roof of someone's apartment building looks like or how close the Hilton is to the Sheraton.

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  Review by karsten 8

  Part 1:
  Hooooly fuck dude

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 4

  Hard to put this into words right away - I've been a lifelong Jackson fan, and it makes me feel ashamed and guilty, everything was so obvious & even if Jackson won his trial, this is the American justice system. So if you or I believed he still wasn't guilty it's because we wanted to believe that. The 4 hours are necessary - almost heroic, because it allows the victims to speak at their own pace. And Oprah isn't wrong - it's about **more**: celebrity idolization, fame, celeb culture and what that lets people get away with. But in the end it comes down like a hammer: ultimately the well-being of human beings is more important than art.

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  Review by sophie 9

  no matter what you think about michael jackson, whether he was innocent or guilty, it is known that as a grown man he surrounded himself with young children. nothing about that is right or ok.

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  Review by Delilah Morales ★★★★★ 15

  1st film of Sundance and I almost feel too sick, too betrayed, to see anything else.

  Look, I get it. MJ was undoubtedly a legend. His music was frequent in my home growing up and my family was in a state of grief when he died in 2009. The black community lost an icon, and 10 years later, the truth about him will be a hard pill to swallow indeed.

  But believe me when I say that this is as damning of an account as we'll likely ever get. I believe the victims and so should you.

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  Review by Roundstone ½ 22

  A “documentary” that features no facts. Just people exploiting the “MeToo” movement and detailing out accusations via stories that they likely have been working on for decades since MJ's death. Without any insight into MJ beyond a character attack, this would be awful enough. But the fact that the co-creators had previously testified that MJ never abused them, and even wrote many years later a memoir about how amazing a person MJ was in their lives, just makes this become such a blatant and disgusting cash grab exploiting a genuine movement. The creators of this documentary are nothing more than attention seekers upset that they never could become successful and the history shows it.

  MJ was accused of ghosting women…

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  Review by Mr. DuLac ★★★★ 14

  One of the most frustrating things about watching Leaving Neverland is coming on Letterboxd and seeing some truly awful takeaways from the film.

  It's the first time I've ever seen a documentary on sexual abuse that painstakingly wants you as a viewer to understand what it means for a child to be seduced by a loved one. That they do not see it as abuse and might even spend their entire lives never viewing it as abuse. Why they would come to their abusers defense time and time again. Why they would struggle to make the connection between what happened to them as a child and the psychological landmine they are presently living as an adult.

  Director Dan Reed does…