Jared McMillan // Film Critic
STILL: A MICHAEL J. FOX MOVIE
Rated R, 95 min.
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Cast: Michael J. Fox
Carrie Fisher once said that celebrity is just obscurity biding its time. If that’s the case, the question becomes what to do with your celebrity while you have it, if you get it. What happens if you’re not good enough to stay on top? How will you react if you never get to the top? More importantly, what happens if you achieve the highest level of fame and celebrity, and something comes along to unceremoniously threaten your celebrity, your career…your life? This has been the reality of Michael J. Fox for the past 30 years.
STILL: A MICHAEL J. FOX MOVIE, the new documentary from director Davis Guggenheim (AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH), looks to show viewers not only Fox’s beginnings and rise to fame but also how he has used his celebrity to create more awareness for Parkinson’s disease. The audience goes through Fox’s upbringing in Canada and how his TV career in Canada led him to Hollywood, where he struggled before landing FAMILY TIES at the 11th hour. More importantly, the film makes no attempt to shy away from Fox’s present and how he lives and functions with Parkinson’s.
In fact, that’s how the film opens. In the first of many well-done reenactments, Fox wakes up after a night of drunk shenanigans to notice his pinky uncontrollably twitching, fluttering like a moth’s wing as if independent from his body, his narration tells us. After snapshots of his career and celebrity give us a prelude of Michael J. Fox in the past, it quickly cuts to Fox in the present, starting his day of management and attempting normalcy. We then hear Guggenheim off-camera discuss the “sad sack narrative” of Fox’s career and life getting crippled by a devastating disease, to which Fox replies, “Yeah, that’s boring.”
It is a perfect setup for the viewer as to how this telling of Fox’s life, by Fox, is going to go. It’s not a narrative that will build the audience to the highest level before getting to a barrage of lows as some documentaries are wont to do. It is a reflection pieced together by excerpts of Fox’s books about his life (he’s written four), so STILL presents itself in that same vein of humor and charming self-awareness. For example, he openly admits that he has always been a bundle of anxiety and nerves under the surface. So, if he cracks a smile while discussing something personal, it’s because of that awareness and his defense.
As the film goes on, it weaves in and out of Fox’s life achievements and benchmarks, with his voice guiding the audience. Guggenheim creates a sort-of linear juxtaposition with Fox’s past and present to clarify how Parkinson’s affects him using a thread of busy movement; the potential he had to gain celebrity and a career as an actor vs. the potential energy that consumes him now. It uses that movement to show Fox’s personality in his early career years, where he was constantly running toward the spotlight. Later, it zeroes in on how he wanted to stop his tremors/unwarranted movement to escape his diagnosis.
One of the more brilliant ways that Guggenheim delves into Fox’s story is through the aforementioned reenactments and how they edit clips of Fox’s filmography into the narrative. It gives the viewer a tether to how they know Fox and have affection for him as an actor to subtly bring them into the reality of Fox as a human being. It helps shift our emotions from pity to empathy as we learn about his wife, then his kids, humanizing him so we can relate better to the subject. That way, when he talks about becoming an alcoholic to run from his new reality, we can say, “Yep, been there,” instead of “Oh, that’s not good, Michael J. Fox.”
There is a lot of pop in the soundtrack, which is understandable since music is tied to memory. However, it can become a bit much and unnecessary at times. Also, at one point, Guggenheim gets upset at Fox off-camera because he didn’t disclose that he was in pain, wasn’t honest about it. It suggests a relationship between Guggenheim and Fox outside the documentarian/subject dynamic. It could’ve brought more depth to the film as it’s both a clinical and personal lens through which they tell this story.
These are minor things outside what STILL: A MICHAEL J. FOX does. Fox discusses his life as a celebrity in Hollywood and how he shifted that celebrity to creating an activist star by starting The Michael J. Fox Foundation, which has raised over $2 billion for Parkinson’s awareness and research. Fox isn’t shy about how long he probably has in this world without a cure, but what he’s created in his life, and with this film, will ensure that his celebrity and legacy will endure past his physical years.
Grade: A
STILL: A MICHAEL J. FOX MOVIE is now streaming on Apple TV+. If you’d like to donate to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, click on this link.
