Michael Jackson took one last figurative moonwalk last night (10/27), as the late King of Pop's posthumous "This Is It" concert film premiered in Los Angeles before throngs of his adoring fans.

More then 5,000 guests reportedly packed into LA's Nokia Theatre to see director Kenny Ortega's film, assembled from backstage footage shot during the rehearsals for Jackson's ill-fated London concerts earlier this year before the performer's death at age 50.

The crowd included the usual star-studded selection of Hollywood talent, including Jackson's four brothers, but not, according to the Los Angeles Times, sister Janet Jackson or father Joe Jackson.

The Los Angeles premiere mirrored similar, but likely less gaudy, events in 33 other cities around the world, including New York, London and Moscow. By this weekend, Sony will have the picture playing in 15,000 theaters around the globe, according to a press release.

"'This Is It' has always been for the fans," Ortega said in introducing the movie to the audience inside the Nokia. "Michael, we love you more."

"He would have loved this," Sony Pictures studio head Amy Pascal told the Los Angeles Times. Pascal's studio reportedly paid $60 million for the rights to turn concert promoter AEG's behind-the-scene footage into "This Is It."

Reviewers were largely effusive in their praise of the film in early reviews, with E! Online commending the film for allowing "the more exacting and refreshingly funny side of Jackson to be revealed. Had Jackson lived, we never would have seen those moments."

Time Magazine praised the film's "unadorned and unplugged" look at the notoriously secretive King of Pop, adding that the rehearsal footage adds a new dimension to his never-was run of London shows. "His heroic effort and attention to detail suggest that this was no take-the-money-and-run greatest-hits scam."

A minority of critics weren't impressed. "Must the show really go on?," asked Chris Richards of the Washington Post. "At best, 'This Is It' is a mere sketch of what Jackson seemed capable of delivering in London, with the King of Pop only half-singing, half-dancing through his most rousing hits."

In the end, however, Jackson's legion of fans will deliver the final verdict. Not all of them were uniformly in favor of the new film, including a group of protestors spotted at the film's London premiere who urged MJ fans not to see the movie. The group, which has started a website called This Is Not, claims that Sony doctored the film's footage to make Jackson appear healthier than he was.

"A couple of weeks before he passed, we saw [Jackson] change drastically," the UK's Guardian newspaper quotes Talin Shajanian, a fan who used to wait outside of the LA rehearsal venue where Jackson was preparing for London shows. "He shared this with us, the pressure that he felt, the concerns that he had."

The singer died in June of a heart attack brought on by a combination of prescription drugs. Police have labeled the death a homicide, and are continuing to investigate the case.