The strangest thing about the downtown L.A. premiere of “This Is It” is that it’s actually playing like a real concert. Fans are milling about outside dressed in white gloves and clamoring for tickets, or at least a peek at the red carpet.

And inside the lobby of the Nokia Theatre, the usual film-premiere pre-screening mingle is merging with pre-concert rituals: fans (more than 5,000 of them) talking about the music, die-hard fans lining up to buy T-shirts.

If Sony gets this kind of event-esque vibe at normal screenings (and there are 14 simultaneous ones set to start in a few hours right next door), they’ll be chuckling all the way to the boxoffice.

Of course, even as the buzz of a film-premiere dovetails with the excitement of a concert’s opening night — indeed, this could, but for a slightly better-dressed crowd, be the start of the thwarted 02 run — it’s fair to ask the if the concerts themselves would have drawn this kind of press attention had Michael Jackson lived.

The screening appears to be set to start. (Is it the first screening to ever start on time? This is historic.) More after the movie.

UPDATE: 6:05 p.m.: The lights keep dimming, the red-carpet feed has stopped telling us how special Paula Abdul feels about the evening, but this is still not it.

6:10 p.m.: Now Kenny Ortega comes out, stands in corner of a large stage and says of Jackson: “A man whose heart pumped to make this world a better place … This is and always has been for the fans.”

And now random foreign-language salutations to people around the world. People in the room are less impressed.

He finishes quickly — oh wait, no, intro for several brothers, including Jermaine … and more about the partnership, the journey, the sacred documentation. Start the movie. Please.

UPDATE: Read the film review by THR’s Kirk Honeycutt here.