Los Angeles - Michael Jackson delivered a posthumous thriller on Tuesday as fans flocked to worldwide premieres of a documentary film billed as the final concert performance of the King of Pop.
Four months after Jackson's death, red carpets were rolled out for 18 simultaneous screenings on five continents for This Is It, culled from more than 100 hours of footage taken from rehearsals for the pop icon's comeback.
The Los Angeles premiere began as parts of the city were plunged into darkness by outages caused by powerful winds.
Gesturing to the gusts buffeting the event, Jackson's former manager Frank DiLeo joked: "He's happy. You can feel him spinning around in the air here ... He's looking down right now laughing his rear end off."
The Hollywood screening mirrored events being held in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America before the movie makes its formal release in 99 countries on Wednesday for a limited two-week release.
In Beijing, a troupe of Jackson impersonators grabbed their crotches and moonwalked for hundreds of screaming fans as the movie premiered in China.
Fans wearing single white gloves and clutching posters of the late pop star shrieked as the lookalikes danced in unison to hits like Thriller and Beat It outside the central Beijing cinema where the film was screened at midnight.
One diehard Chinese fan, 60-year-old Zhao Min, said Jackson's music was "full of vitality."
"I love his moonwalk very much," Zhao said.
Early reviews of the movie on Tuesday were positive. The USA Today newspaper said that while the film did not "restore Jackson to his past glory" it did "offer glimpses of his bygone greatness."
"The songs remind us that early this summer, the world lost a genuine, if genuinely troubled, star," the paper opined.
Melanie Hillman, a television producer who attended the Los Angeles premiere, said the movie had captured the imagination of the audience.
"His way of rehearsing was that he was giving 110 percent. It was unbelievable, you could feel it," she told AFP.
"Sometimes you were sitting in your seat like, 'wow.' People were crying, clapping, cheering."
Advance tickets to shows in several countries sold out within days as fans scrambled to be among the first to see a film billed by Sony Pictures as the movie of "a concert that never happened."
Jackson, who died on June 25 aged 50, spent the previous four months rehearsing in Los Angeles for a gruelling series of 50 concert spectaculars scheduled to begin at London's 02 Arena in July.
More than 800 000 tickets had been sold for the concerts, with organisers promising one of the "most expensive and technically advanced" live shows ever.
Video footage from the rehearsals had been intended to help organisers critique the show and was never intended for public viewing. Sony bought the footage for $60-million (about R420-million) after executives saw only several minutes.
The movie also got a stamp of approval from Jackson's long-time friend and confidante, actress Elizabeth Taylor, who was privy to a sneak preview.
Taylor, who recently underwent heart surgery, hailed the movie as the "single most brilliant piece of filmmaking I have ever seen" in a tweet on micro-blogging site Twitter.
"It cements forever Michael's genius in every aspect of creativity."
Despite the anticipation surrounding the film, a group of diehard Jackson fans had launched an online campaign urging devotees of the singer to boycott the movie, claiming it hides the truth about his final days.
The group claims on its website - This-Is-Not-It - that the movie attempts to mask Jackson's physical frailty as he maintained a punishing schedule of rehearsals.
"In the weeks leading up to Michael Jackson's death, while this footage was being shot, people around him knew that he looked like he might have died," the group said. "Those who stood to make a profit chose to ignore it."
However audience members who saw the first screening on Tuesday said Jackson looked healthy in the film.
"Michael Jackson was very fit. Very healthy. It was the old Michael Jackson, the young Michael Jackson," Hillman said. "I was really surprised how creative and healthy and rhythmic he was." - Sapa-AFP
Independent Newspapers subscribes to the South African Press Code that prescribes news that is truthful, accurate, fair and balanced. If we don't live up to the Code please contact the Press Ombudsman at 011 484 3612/8
