JUSTIN BIEBER, NEVER SAY NEVER
JUSTIN BIEBER, NEVER SAY NEVER (Rated G): If I were an overweight 12-year-old with glasses & braces on her teeth, I'd think I had died and gone to heaven. But even though I'm not, I must admit as an adult attending simply to review the movie, I found it 105-minutes of curious illumination. It also had the feel of déjà vu - like watching a skinny Frank Sinatra send young girls into paroxysms of elation - thousands of them, screaming their heads off, leaping ecstatically with home-made placards professing their undying love, and going limp at the mere proximity with their current heart throb.
Simultaneously, there was the overlay of a runty version of gyrating Michael Jackson replete with light, G-rated brush of hand against crotch, amid flashing lights & fireworks, strutting, gesticulating, dominating - except that this pint-sized 16-year old kid was the perfect reconstruction for today's kids, right down to the ubiquitous purple hoodie with oversized baseball cap (backwards, of course), purple snow boots, with a studded belt holding tightly below the butt (about 6" of revealed underwear modestly matching the color of his studded, many-zippered pants suit).
Director Jon M. Chu used the traditional documentary style for this film: starting with home movies of a 2-year-old playing on his first set of drums, then acoustic guitar, performing for his adulating mother & grandparents, then local shows - a precocious kid basking in the limelight from the start, developing a stage persona with an infectious smile, floppy blond hair circling his angelic face - confidently singing in a voice that seems not yet to have changed, lapping up attention from his audience, as it goes through one long orgiastic ritual, shouting, "I love you, Justin," screaming through their hands shaped into hearts in front of their faces, their bodies in unrestrained gyration in mass imitation of their sacred idol.
"I think about him 99% of my life," yells one girl. "It's his face," screams another. "It's his hair," shouts the third, wildly waving her BIEBER FEVER placard.
The documentary style continues, following his rise to fame in a small Canadian city, being picked up by a vet in musical show biz, starting small, playing everywhere & anywhere, gradually developing a following as he hones his talent with the aid of hand-picked trainers. The film progresses to his biggest thrill: playing at NY's Madison Square Garden, with Miley Cyrus as part of the show. Sold out in less than half an hour. Only hitch: he develops horse throat just days before, has to be doctored up with quick meds, ready to play the Garden like a trouper. The final part of the show is the only part that doesn't zip through with short spurts of MTV cutting - about 10 full minutes of noisy chaos from the audience as he performs. Then a montage of flashbacks, more adulation from family & crews, and it's all over but the shouting - which will continue as long as his diminutives don't grow up.
Except for the amateur movie cut-ins, the show has a professional look to it, a pint-sized concert documentary for a pint-sized kid that has taken the entire world of teens for the experience of a lifetime - at least, for the present.
Oh, did I mention: throughout the movie there was the constant twitter action going on - likely the pre-teens ecstatically sending knock-out descriptions to friends of the action on the screen. Vive la tweeks! (Grade: B-)
