REVIEW: Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie [2023]

Rating: R | Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Date: May 12th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Apple Original Films
Director(s): Davis Guggenheim

The trembling was a message … from the future.

All credit to Michael J. Fox for finding the irony in the juxtaposition of where he came from and where he is now. That he was never able to be still until he became physically unable to stop moving. Director Davis Guggenheim puts a lot of running into his documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie as a result. All the characters Fox played, running and sliding through hallways and newly shot footage of scripted stand-in Danny Irizarry playing the youthful Fox in reenactments of the words the actor narrates.

It’s those words that admit he was always running away—from fears, insecurities, and eventually the diagnosis he kept hidden for seven years by always keeping his left hand behind his back or holding a prop. Running from life and truth with alcohol. Running until the point where one single step suddenly holds the potential of broken bones from another fall that cannot be avoided.

Still becomes a great double-feature title to go alongside Introducing, Selma Blair: candid looks inside diseases as told by charismatic entertainers who can no longer be quite who they once were that prove powerful documents of humanity’s perseverance. Fox takes us to physical therapy and hangouts with wife Tracy Pollan and their four kids when not sitting in front of the camera for one-on-one interviews with the director.

Guggenheim supplements that insight with expertly curated scenes from Fox’s TV and cinematic canon to help advance the narrative in entertaining and familiar ways. Sometimes we’re watching a young Alex Keaton or Marty McFly flashing a smile or providing a witty retort to serve as a projection of current feelings. Sometimes it’s Mike Flaherty doing something weird with his hand to show just how easy it is to ignore the obvious when you don’t know what it is you’re seeing.

And through it all is unpolished honesty. Tales of meeting Tracy and discovering how fake the celebrity façade consuming his life was. The whirlwind of shooting a season of “Family Ties” and Back to the Future simultaneously, sleeping in vans as he traveled between sets. Admissions of using alcohol to dissociate from the reality that his world was falling apart and the darkness that came with sobriety insofar as finally needing to accept himself and his place as husband and father above simply being an entertainer.

The film doesn’t go too far into his advocacy work beyond a passing mention alongside Muhammad Ali, but we get the idea of him shifting the impact of his fame and influence. I get leaving that stuff out too, so the film doesn’t become a self-aggrandizing show of heroics. That’s not Still’s purpose. It’s instead about normalizing Parkinson’s. Defanging some of the stigma. Just as Fox’s ascension shows stardom is possible for everyone, his humor in coping with his fate shows hardships are too. Approach both with grace.