Most reviews are in and the furor has abated a bit even as Spike Lee has weighed in on the “Elephant in the Room” missing from the new “Michael” Jackson biopic by Antoine Fuqua.

But fans are still showing up in droves. And as I was off the clock and out of the country when it opened, I ducked in to catch “Michael” before checking out this week’s new releases on Thursday night.

Lee’s got a point, that Fuqua’s film, scripted by three-time Oscar nominee John Logan (“Aviator,” “Hugo,” “Gladiator”), is perfectly within its rights (and the family’s all-controlling “permission”) to dwell on the rise of a superstar rather than the child abuse allegations that dominated the circus that was Jackson’s final decades.

End your movie early enough and maybe the too-forgiving fans will forgive that most mortal of sins. You also dodge the sham marriages, bizarre public blunders, lawsuit settlements and an ongoing moral, ethical and public releations nightmare of the “Neverland Ranch” era.

But “Michael” is so “authorized” that it calls attention to its myriad shortcomings. All the rough edges and much of the “reality” is rubbed off as we get little to no sense of how this pop music pixie took over the culture with iconic tunes and legendary dance moves, a towerinng and terribly damaged and flawed former child star whose lesser sins included billing himself “The King of Pop.”

I mean, he was. But did he ever say that he wouldn’t name his breakout solo LP “Michael” because “It sounds too egocentric?” I doubt it.

“Michael” takes us from the controlling, abused childhood young Michael (Juliano Valdi) endured — a childhood stolen by his greedy, abusive father Joseph (Colman Domingo, excellent as always, but restrained) — in the ’60s to his break from his Jackson Five brothers and manager/father for solo superstardom, his triumphs and trials and accidents in the early to late ’80s.

But comparing this infuriatingly shallow picture to recent bio-pics of Whitney Houston, James Brown, Freddie Mercury, Charlie Parker, Bob Dylan, Elvis and Johnny Cash just underscores its shortcomings.

All but erasing Janet Jackson, never ever “explaining” who the “man in the mirror” or the image “behind the curtain” was, this is far and away the shallowest of the recent musical bio-pics lot.

Logan relies on one all-seeing observer, Jackson’s longtime (’76-96) ex-cop security guard, “fixer” and confidante Bill Bray (KeiLyn Durrel Jones) as something of a framing device, but Fuqua won’t even commit to that.

Jaafar Jackson’s uncanny impersonation of the sweet-seeming, airy not-of-this-world voice and signature dance moves is uncanny. And there is one great laugh than only those who lived through the world of ’80s American pop will get.

“If I’m not here to receive these ideas,” a hard-working Michael declares, “God might give’em to PRINCE!”

Domingo’s on pointe as a classic credit-hogging stage parent, forever reminding the “genius” of his brood who “got us out of Gary (Indiana).

But Nia Long, playing Jackson’s supportive mom, barely registers, a problem in the writing and the passive performance. Miles Teller similarly makes zero impression as the manager who takes over and helps Michael break ties with his father.

If you sit there wondering who is playing the famous CBS Records chief (Walter Yetnikoff) who, at Michael’s prodding, forced MTV to integrate and play Michael’s “short films” (music videos), it’s a barely recognizable Mike Myers, who has little to work with and underwhelms even doing the bare minimum.

Larenz Tate is nobody’s idea of a Berry Gordy (Motown’s guiding genius). And so on down the line.

I kept looking for some flesh and bone depiction of Jackson’s discipline, the work behind the “genius” that borrowed dance moves at a street gang “Beat It” dance rehearsal and gave the world the Moonwalk. A lot more of his creative interaction with Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson) — pivotal to his rise to the summit — was in order.

It’s one thing to leave out the making of a pedophile, problematic subject matter on several levels. It’s quite another to leave out Janet, to skim over the recording of “Beat It” and limit “Thriller” to the John Landis music video shoot. It’s quite another to simply serve up an uncanny skin-deep caricature of the guy.

I remember listening to an NPR program’s search for the reasons the Black community in particular never canceled or gave up on Jackson, no matter how twisted his story got. A single band-aid on the nose is meant to symbolize his extensive plastic surgery and skin bleaching efforts to erase his race.

Where is the Jackson of that famous Springsteen anecdote, about meeting the pop icon backstage at Live Aid in ’85, sipping beers just like another one of the rock and pop “guys?”

The “His Story Continues” end title here hints that maybe the family will relent as Lionsgate cries out for a sequel to cover Jackson’s final years. Who’ll they get to play Oprah? Priscilla? Miss Janet if you’re Nasty?

Fuqua’s a better director than this and Logan’s a better writer than “Michael” shows. Now that everybody’s delivered a blockbuster out of this troubled man of mystery, maybe there’ll be money to try something more serious.

They managed the hard part — finding the perfect title character. Now comes the even harder part, doing their subject justice.

Rating: PG-13, “thematic material,” smoking and profanity

Cast: Jaafar Jackson, Nia Long, Miles Teller, Larenz Tate, Juliano Valdi, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, Colman Domingo and Mike Myers.

Credits: Directed by Antoine Fuqua, scripted by John Logan. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 2:07