Memphis, as any concert promoter will tell you, is a walk-up town. So while screenings of "Michael Jackson's This Is It" -- a concert documentary about a concert that never was -- have sold out in advance at a record pace from Hollywood to Bangkok, Memphians will have no trouble finding tickets to the movie, which opened today at a dozen area theaters.

Even so, any true Michael Jackson fan should run not moonwalk to the nearest theater. Contrary to a cynic's expectations, "This Is It" suggests the late superstar's 50 "comeback" concerts in London would have been a triumph; even better (for MJ fans), the documentary reveals a "King of Pop" whose talent was undiminished by whatever private demons helped contribute to his shocking death on June 25 at the age of 50.

Rehearsing in March and June on huge stages inside the Forum and Staples Center in Los Angeles, surrounded by dozens of dancers, musicians, technicians and other collaborators, the Michael Jackson we see in "This Is It" is confident, likable and enthusiastic -- apparently unbothered by the somewhat ironic contrast between his slight frame and thin but expressive voice and the gargantuan excess of what was supposed to be the biggest concert event in pop history (or "HIStory," to cite one of the two dozen songs heard in the film). Despite a face as distressingly unreal as that of any of the zombies in the new "Thriller" footage shot for the concert tour, Jackson looks healthy and energetic, especially for a 50-year-old man.

Directed by Kenny Ortega (director and chief choreographer with Jackson for the concerts), "This Is It" begins with awed testimonies from dancers to Jackson's wonderfulness, but quickly leaves the hagiography more or less behind to become, in essence, a concert film without an audience, with performances -- sometimes entire songs, sometimes snippets -- edited from footage from different rehearsals. Many of the numbers are knockouts, for all their Vegas/ Disneyland/Cirque du Soleil/Cecil B. DeMille Kong-sized kitsch, merging live music and dance with filmed elements to be projected on screens during the concert.

"Smooth Criminal" digitally places Jackson in the frame with Humphrey Bogart and Rita Hayworth in clips from "Gilda" and "The Big Sleep." During "Thriller," Jackson emerges from a mechanical black widow spider, while prop "ghost grooms" and "ghost brides" fly about the arena (William Castle would be proud). Jackson apparently didn't notice the contradiction between his identification with the armored, futuristic, apparently fascistic soldiers who emerge from a fortress-like stone "M" in "They Don't Care About Us" and the young orphan girl in an orca T-shirt who saves the last flower in the world from a smoking bulldozer in a film created for "The Earth Song."

Jackson clearly runs things with an iron if glittery glove, but he's never angry and rarely even impatient; it's tempting to search for clues to his offstage eccentricity in his behavior here, but, in fact, he seems more well-adjusted than most of the performers we see in similar concert documentaries. His brief instructions to the musicians are sometimes inscrutable but usually pertinent, as when he explains that "The Way You Make Me Feel" needs to "simmer."

Assembled "For the Fans" (according to an opening dedication) in reaction to Jackson's death, "This Is It" actually may benefit from the haste of its editing and delivery. The documentary has no subplots, no back stories about the performers, no discussion of what it all means -- it's all Michael, from the breathless "Wanna Be Starting Something" that opens the show to a too-brief Jackson 5 tribute to Jackson's apparently sincere declaration that he wants his concerts "to put love back into the world."

-- John Beifuss: 529-2394