Justin Bieber Fan Club

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never

Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly

A lot of people have a built-in cynicism toward teen pop, and with fairly good reason. From the Monkees to Miley Cyrus, it has been packaged and promoted like candy to a baby. Its performers are often little more than blow-dried puppets with angel faces. Yet most of us, deep down, know that even with an army of adults pulling the strings, teen pop can, on occasion, be great — an authentic explosion of bubblegum passion. Just think of the Monkees’ best songs, or the sublime swoon of the Backstreet Boys’ ”I Want It That Way,” or Hanson’s ”MMMBop,” which spent a year as the most infectious sound on the airwaves. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never may be the concert film as glorified promotional product, but it captures a genuine youthquake.

At 16 years old, Bieber is small-boned and loose-limbed, with the face of an androgynous cherub: those goo-goo eyes, that ridiculously overripe grin and windswept helmet of hair, which combine to give him the look of Hilary Swank as a junior-high jock. That mane has some of the effect that the Beatles’ moptops did: It invites tween girls in the audience to view him as both the other and as a mirror of themselves. No wonder they start squealing.

In Never Say Never, Bieber, at Madison Square Garden, bops and gyrates without any special virtuosity, but he’s got something that a lot of better dancers don’t: He communicates joy in every move. He’s also got the voice of a happy canary, and when he does a song like ”U Smile,” with its lilting, back-and-forth beat and tasty harmonic conversions, he turns the simple, gorgeous chorus (”You smile, I smile”) into a house-swaying epiphany.

Never Say Never is a concert movie intercut with what might be a full-scale Behind the Music episode. It’s jam-packed with home videos and audition tapes (there’s an astonishing clip of Bieber at 12, crooning like Michael Jackson outside the Avon Theatre in his hometown of Stratford, Ontario), plus interviews with his friends, family members, gofers, producers, bodyguards, and associates.

The film presents Bieber as an icon with an epic life story — which is a bit much. Yet his grassroots rise is fascinating. He was the first pop star to rocket to fame via YouTube, when his homemade videos caught the eye of talent manager Scooter Braun, who flew him to Atlanta. With Braun, then Usher, as his mentor, Bieber was able to sidestep the Nickelodeon/Disney Channel robo teeny-bop machine, and the film shows us just why that mattered. Playing the drums (he’s a wizard), parading his kung fu fighting moves, he’s the same boisterous, do-what-you-feel kid on stage that he was in those videos. That’s why he leaves the Mileys and Jonases in the dust.

Never Say Never does have one structural oddity: It counts down, day by day, to Bieber’s big Madison Square Garden show, but since the concert clips we see along the way are taken mostly from that show, the musical momentum doesn’t build. When he gets to MSG, it’s almost an anticlimax. Or would be, except that Bieber, performing with guests like Boyz II Men, gives every number a shot of high pizzazz. If this is what it sounds like when a new millennium goes pop, I’ll take it. B+

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Justin: Baby to Baby baby baby

By Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic

Justin: Baby to Make a C with your left hand, make a backward C with your right; put them together and point thumbs south.

If Never Say Never is an accurate thermometer, then Bieber Fever – the pubescent-female passion for popster Justin Bieber – is North America’s happiest epidemic.

From Bieber’s modest beginnings in Stratford, Ontario, almost 17 years ago to his Madison Square Garden concert last August that sold out in 22 minutes, Never Say Never is one part backstage biography, one part concert film charting the roots and meteoric rise of Justin II, successor to that supernova surnamed Timberlake.

Bypassing the Disney and Nickelodeon machines that reliably mold disposable teen sensations, Bieber got attention via YouTube videos of him singing Chris Brown tunes.

One of these DIY videos caught the eye of Atlanta-based entrepreneur Scooter Braun. Braun introduced him to R&B star Usher and to producer L.A. Reid, who shrewdly assesses Bieber as “the Macaulay Culkin of music.” (Bieber shares with child stars Culkin and Leonardo DiCaprio those tousled blond locks and that rosebud mouth.)

What the 3-D film lacks in cinematic charm and ingenuity is compensated for by its subject’s high-wattage charisma and low-key earnestness. This is not A Hard Day’s Night, even if Bieber has a Beatles haircut and shakes windswept locks like puppy emerging from tub.

Replete with home movies of Baby Justin banging drums, kindergartner thwacking T-ball, and preteen strumming an oversize guitar, Jon Chu’s film bounces to the Tiger Beat. Bieber fans describe their crush object in words like adorable.

Chu, who directed Step Up 3, has fun with the 3-D effects here, most of which involve JB pointing his finger at the audience, creating the illusion that he is pointing directly at you. (Cue high-pitched shrieks.)

In scene after scene, we see that the hardest-working 16-year-old in show business is still an ordinary kid who likes pizza and shooting hoops and still has to hit the books (he’s tutored on the road). Bieber is buoyed by what his voice coach “Mama Jan” calls a “functional dysfunctional family,” costumers and cheerleaders and dance coaches who help him make good choices, e.g., canceling a performance when his vocal cords are inflamed.

But the movie also acknowledges the 100-hour workweeks of this overnight sensation who made appearances at high schools and radio stations across the country to build his fan base and endear himself to disc jockeys. On stage variously with Boyz II Men, Jaden Smith, Miley Cyrus, and Ludacris, Bieber carries himself like a squeaky-clean homeboy with an angelic voice. On him, swagger looks sweet.

Still, Braun and Bieber’s mother, Pattie Mallette, worry about the teenager’s intense professionalism. Braun recalls the Video Music Awards in 2009 at which Madonna eulogized Michael Jackson saying, “He never had a childhood.”

“Don’t let that happen to me,” Bieber said to his father surrogate. Amen.

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never *** (out of four stars)

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Justin Bieber: Never Say Never’ an Engaging Musical Portrait

by Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter

The teen pop sensation will likely make believers out of all but the most hardened of skeptics with this 3D doc from “Step Up 3D” director Jon Chu.

Setting out to demonstrate that overnight sensations deserve respect too, Justin Bieber should make believers out of all but the most hardened of skeptics with Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.

An energetic portrait of the global superstar as a down-to-earth teen from small-town Canada, the documentary works overtime (by about 10 minutes too long) to change his perception from fluke Internet phenom to the hardest working 16-year-old on the planet.

And it generally succeeds, too, thanks to a visually energetic approach by director Jon Chu that keeps all the obligatory backstage/onstage bits moving fluidly.

In a business where timing is everything, the Paramount release is perfectly positioned for maximum impact especially considering an ambitious media blitz that saw Bieber extending his demographic reach with appearances on The Daily Show and Late Show With David Letterman.

Unlike, say, the 2009 Jonas Brothers 3D concert film, which felt like it came out a couple of years too late, Never Say Never is striking while the fever’s still hot, which should translate into more Miley-sized returns.

Starting off, appropriately, on a YouTube page, where Bieber famously overtook the sneezing pandas and cute kitties singing a cover of Chris Brown’s With You, the film follows the trajectory of its main man’s career from behind his kiddie drum kit to the mighty Madison Square Garden stage, which, incidentally, was sold out in a mere 22 minutes.

Along the way we meet his young, devout Christian single mom, Pattie (who gave birth to The Bieb when she was all of 18) and his baby-faced manager, Scooter Braun, not to mention several of his more famous, early adherents, including Usher and prolific producer Antonio “L.A.” Reid, who in the remarkably self-possessed Bieber saw a musical Macaulay Culkin.

Director Chu, who infuses the film with the same lively zip he lent Step Up 3D (although here he’s working with a more intriguing “script”), keeps things disarmingly real for the most part, and even manages to work in a little drama when it appears Bieber’s raggedy voice may not bounce back in time for the MSG gig.

And much like in Chu’s previous film, the 3D pops mainly in the performance sequences, in which he’s joined by the likes of Usher, Cyrus, Ludacris and Jaden Smith, where all the fist-pumping, dancing lasers and cascading ticker tape work to heightened effect.

But where the film ultimately hits home is with the more intimate, backstage stuff.

Under the protective wing of an on-the-road support system serving as, in the words of one of his crew, a highly functional dysfunctional family, Bieber manages to make his film’s inspirational message heard loud and clear:

Despite your preconceived notions, he’s just your average, everyday multiplatinum-selling teen idol who still likes to kick back with his Stratford, Ontario, homies and grab a slice at the corner pizza joint.

After saying grace, naturally.

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Justin Bieber: Never Say Never

By Andrew Barker of Variety

Though anyone who needs convincing won’t touch this one with a 10-foot pole, “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” makes a persuasive case for its titular star as a far more talented-than-usual teen idol. As much a legitimate documentary as it is a 3D concert film and teen girl squeal-delivery device, the film possesses surprising moments of candor on the toil of teenage superstardom, even if the overall effect is purely promotional. Provided it skirts the curse of the Jonas Brothers (who released a similar film just as their popularity began to flatline), it should go over like gangbusters.

While they ought to be distracted enough by the intimate interview footage (and almost creepily frequent shirtless sequences) of the Biebs on display, fans expecting a straightforward concert pic will likely be confused by the early going. The film starts with what seems a sort of meta-commentary, showing an onscreen email inbox opening up to YouTube clips of laughing babies and Failblog mishaps before finally reminding the audience of the singer’s roots singing in simple, homemade viral clips.

Indeed, Bieber is perhaps the first fully social-media-bred pop star, so it’s no surprise that he should be so easygoing with the film crew here, alternately mugging for director Jon M. Chu and tolerating him as though he were an intrusive, camera-wielding grandparent.

From here, pic intersperses half-song glimpses of Bieber’s headlining stint at Madison Square Garden last year with backstage footage and biographical info, all chaptered by a rolling countdown to the show. Included is his childhood with a single teenage mother in small-town Canada, the emergence of his precocious musical talent and his subsequent quasi-adoptions by both record-label svengali Scooter Braun and superstar mentor Usher.

No doubt, this kid can really sing, and play some decent guitar and drums — as homevideo of the artist as a (somewhat) younger man busking on street corners illustrates — and he’s often disconcertingly adult in his professional demeanor.

Attempts to derive high narrative drama from Bieber’s nagging throat problems on the eve of the big gig are a bit ludicrous, especially considering we’ve been watching selections from said concert throughout. But they do provide an interesting glimpse at the behind-the-scenes machinations of the whole enterprise. They also beg the big question of whether its healthy to consign a 16-year-old kid to a life of such pressures, and a brief invocation of Michael Jackson’s death makes one a bit apprehensive about whether the team in his corner has his best interests in mind.

Pic eventually shows its heavier hand later on, as Braun describes his rather self-aggrandizing habit of teasing ticketless fans outside concert venues before bequeathing them primo comped seats as “giving back,” and the interviews with such fans who can recite Bieber’s birthday down to the minute and day of the week are a little alarming. But at other times, the film (and by association, its star) shows a healthy sense of humor about the Bieber Fever phenomenon, including a hilarious slo-mo sequence of Bieber flipping his famous hair to the strains of Etta James’ “At Last.”

The 3D work is mostly applied to the concert itself, which finally begins to take precedence with a Miley Cyrus duet and reaches a full-on giddy climax with the set-closing “Baby,” the sole song in Bieber’s catalog thus far that seems destined for the archives. Other tech contributions, including the filling-loosening sound mix, are expertly handled.

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Tweens get locks of love

By David Malitz of The Washington Post

Justin Bieber. To some people he’s that young singer. You know, the one with the hair. To others — mostly ’tween girls — he is the greatest singer in the history of music. The cutest boy who ever lived. And, quite possibly, the greatest person in the history of mankind. Ever. OMG. And don’t you dare make fun of The Hair.

“Never Say Never,” the new concert film/documentary starring the 16-year-old pop megastar, has an easy task in winning over that latter segment. If the film consisted solely of the one scene in which a shirtless Bieber blow-dries his luscious locks, that would be enough to convince them it is the greatest cinematic achievement since “Citizen Kane.” (Whoever that is.) The bigger question is whether any folks who don’t shriek at the mere mention of the Biebs’ name will leave the theater with a case of Bieber Fever.

Answer: Perhaps a mild case, but nothing too serious.

“Never Say Never” is sort of like the featured piece of a political nominating convention. It’s a fluffy, mildly inspiring, celebration of the hero leading up to his big moment. In this case it’s not potential leadership of the free world, but instead a concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden that is seen as the culmination of a whirlwind couple of years that saw Bieber rise from Canadian YouTube sensation to international heartthrob. It plays to the base, and if it wins over a few newbies, all the better.

Although director Jon Chu tries to paint Bieber as a sort of underdog throughout the movie, what’s remarkable is actually how smooth the journey to success was.

His gift for music was clear from an early age, and there is plenty of video footage to prove it. Baby Bieber (adorable, obviously) bangs bongos, moves on to a full drum kit, eventually picks up guitar and finally develops that sugary voice. There he is busking on the streets of Ontario, competing in local talent shows — always with a camera trained on him.

Sometimes it feels like the movie has been in the works for his entire life. (Which, really, it has.) In fact, when manager Scooter Braun tells of Bieber’s first meeting with eventual mentor Usher when an excitable Bieber pestered him with questions after Braun specifically told him not to, it feels weird that we just hear about this and don’t actually get to see it. That’s rectified a few minutes later when we see footage of Bieber’s initial audition, of sorts, for Usher. Bieber’s story is almost like a true life manifestation of “The Truman Show,” where we see every move he makes.

Braun is the brains behind Bieber’s success, the man who devoted himself to making a star of the kid after first seeing some videos on YouTube. It’s his voice we hear more than any other than Bieber’s, and he’s in charge of the massive crew that has become Bieber’s extended family. Fittingly, it’s Braun who gets the final hug — second only to Bieber’s own mother, Pattie Malette — after the triumphant MSG performance.

Bieber himself comes off like, well, a 16-year-old kid. A bit goofy, a bit cocky and really into his hair. There are plenty of attempts to showcase him as just a regular kid — eating pizza with his friends back home, being told to clean his room, brushing his teeth — but it’s clear he had stardom on his mind from the time he knew what stardom was.

As well he should have. That mindset is what helps him shine during the musical segments. Bieber seems most comfortable when there are 20,000 eyes and cameras focused on him, not just the one following him around backstage. His voice is undeniably charming, his stage presence self-assured and his songs almost always catchy. Dismiss him as the latest teen sensation if you will, but his sprightly R&B-based pop songs are more Jackson 5 than New Kids on the Block.

Will the squealing teenage girls, the ones who profess unending love during preconcert interviews and openly weep when he sings and gyrates onstage, stand by him even when his voice changes and a new sensation comes along with an even cooler haircut? It’s hard to say. But they will almost certainly stand up and sing along during the closing performance of “Baby,” and that’s the point of “Never Say Never.”

Audience may contain shrieking girls.

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Justin Bieber: Never Say Never: The Bieb has his moment

By James Adams of The Globe And Mail

Any adult who has had teenage children is going to find watching Justin Bieber: Never Say Never a bittersweet experience.

Equal parts biopic, concert film and pep rally, the movie’s 105 minutes do a good job of conveying the pleasures of pop, courtesy of the very real talents of Justin Bieber who, his 17th birthday just weeks away, has gone, baby, gone from relative obscurity in Stratford, Ont., to global ubiquity in less than two years, becoming a Twitter-driven teen tycoon en route.

For Bieber believers, the film’s a celebration of YouTubed youth, of living in an ecstatic moment that seems like forever, a moment the whole world, even Jay Leno, seems to be watching and enjoying. It’s about the audiences’ joy of being one drop of water among many in a great swell of feeling. In short, it’s an evocation of pop manias past – big ones (Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Michael Jackson) and not-so-big (David Cassidy, Bay City Rollers, New Kids on the Block, Ricky Martin, the Jonas Brothers).

That’s the sweet spot. And believe me, the hundreds of (mostly) singing, screaming, swooning girls with whom I saw Never Say Never the other evening were very much in the spot. Maddie, a 12-year-old who sat next to me singing along to such hits as One Time and U Smile while waving a glo-stick throughout, told me afterward that she thought the film was “really good” and she’d “definitely” be seeing it again and buying the DVD “for sure” when it’s released.

My 16-year-old son, by contrast, claims, like many males his age, to have no time for such idolatry. When told I’d be reviewing Never Say Never, he groaned and declared: “If you don’t give it zero stars, I’ll be ashamed to call you my dad!” Later he said it would be okay if I gave it one star.

The bitterness (if one can call it that) of the Bieber phenomenon is an adult thing – the realization that pop can be disorienting, dangerous fun, especially at its highest levels. Pop, after all, is what a fat soap bubble does after it’s flashed so prettily and briefly in a radiant sky. Pop is what happened to the King of Pop. Pop was the sound of Mark Chapman’s pistol.

Of course this cautionary side, the pain and the poignancy, is only touched upon in Never Say Never. Essentially, director Jon Chu, a man best known for the hip-hop dance film Step Up 2: The Streets, offers a rehash of the myth of the Biebs, the stuff we’ve already read about in Vanity Fair, among many other places.

Amazingly, for a film that promises some up-close-and-personal time beyond the faux reach-outs afforded by the generally ineffectual 3-D effects, there’s not one real sit-down chat with the star. Instead, we get a blizzard of baby pictures and videos which demonstrate that Justin was a very cute toddler, a confident hambone from the get-go and the natural byproduct of what happens when the home video camera is always on.

These images, in turn, are inter-cut with testimonials from Bieber’s Grade 7 teacher, his soccer coach and his Stratford friends, as well as from his voice trainer, music director, manager, grandparents, mother, a teary-eyed dad (who split with Bieber’s mother when he was 10 months old) and, of course, the hair-stylist responsible for the famous flop.

Bieber’s mop-top, in fact, provides the single best “adult moment” in the film, when Chu fills the screen with Bieber swishing his tresses back and forth in slo-mo as Etta James (or Dinah Washington?) emotes At Last.

Using concert footage from Bieber’s 2010 tour, Chu tries to build suspense by arcing the film toward a climactic performance at New York’s Madison Square Garden – what one Bieb handler helpfully describes as “the pinnacle of success for an artist.” Mere days before the big show, though, Bieber blows his voice, forcing the postponement of at least one gig. His mother, meanwhile, prays to the angels for “complete healing.” Will the Biebs recover in time to take Manhattan? Hey, the movie’s called Never Say Never for a reason.

Near the film’s end, Beiber’s manager, Scooter Braun, muses on how he wouldn’t want to be the man to bet on Bieber not having a long career. History, of course, shows that Bieber’s chances are slim, even though his abilities are superior to those of many previous teen dreams. The Beatles pulled a neat trick going from I Wanna Hold Your Hand to A Day in the Life in just three short years. They moved with the times, and the times moved them and they moved the times.

It’s a feat Bieber will have to duplicate in a world far faster, more competitive and with more distractions than that of the Beatles. Right now he’s the sound and face of Now, but tomorrow? Tomorrow never knows.

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Justin Bieber: Never Say Never

By Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe

From unknown to hair icon, fueled by Web

For about half a song, “Never Say Never’’ — the new, extremely watchable, nominal documentary about dancing singer Justin Bieber — celebrates the 16-year-old’s strange, wraparound haircut. Bieber stands in front of the movie’s 3D camera and swings his bangs in slow motion, while a robust, romantic epiphany of Etta James’s “At Last’’ plays around him.

The choice is a show of sweet, classy restraint since the more obviously appropriate song is the one Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith’s daughter, Willow, had a massive hit with in the spring: “Whip My Hair.’’

Bieber has a Beatles’ bowl cut that swirls at a canted funhouse angle. It’s what on meteorological maps is designated as a grave high-pressure system — a hairicaine.

The movie usefully, carefully, and cogently argues that Bieber is more than his hair. He is his hoodies. He is his pop-hooks. He is his many handlers.

We’re encouraged to forget for the moment that Bieber — in his hair battle with Tom Brady, his amusing participation in a Best Buy commercial with Ozzy Osbourne, his appearance with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show’’ as part of a parody of body-swap comedies — is as famous for nothing as he is for something. He’s become a ubiquitous part of the cultural oxygen, which might make some people wish they were fish.

The movie wants us to know that Bieber came from humble North American beginnings (in Ontario, Canada), that he works hard, that he lives for his fans, that he can sing live. In that sense, the film is packaged, like recent concert extravaganzas about Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

Yet the director, John M. Chu, has been permitted to present enough of the Bieber process and enterprise to be intriguing. It’s a vaguely like the fascinating Michael Jackson performance documentary, “This Is It.’’

The movie charts Bieber’s rather immediate ascendance from obscurity to Internet sensation to selling out Madison Square Garden in 22 minutes last year.

It explains how he wound up under the auspices, first, of Usher, then the producer and recording executive Antonio “L.A.’’ Reid. They say they saw something special in him, and the film has lots of footage to suggest what that might have been: a white tween male who could sing with reasonable soul.

The argument here is that Bieber became famous in a new way: through social media and YouTube. On Twitter, he has well more than 7 million followers, but, in a rare act of social-media politesse, he follows 107,000 people. Taylor Swift has 5 million followers and follows 49, which is about normal for celebrities. (Kanye West has more than 2 million followers and follows no one.) Who knows what this portends for his career’s longevity. But he and his people do appear sincerely bonded to their fans.

One of the movie’s many nice touches presents a swarm of clips in which Bieber’s fans sing “One Time’’ while he performs it live. The thousands of video frames become a wailing wall of adulation.

But “Bieber fever,’’ as the mania he’s inspired is called, also has a cultish tinge. During his shows he invites a concertgoer to sit on stage so he can serenade her with “One Less Lonely Girl.’’ Bieber turns 17 in a month, but he’s scarcely *****. His dangerlessness is his appeal.

But when he sings to a fellow teenager in a packed stadium, he’s no longer a pop star or not only a pop star. He’s a televangelist pretending to heal the lame.

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Justin Bieber: Never Say Never’ is familiar, cute story of pop star’s rise to fame; crush material

By Elizabeth Weitzman of The Daily News

It’s common for Justin Bieber’s team to talk about how unique his story is, how there’s never been anyone like him and probably never will be again. And maybe that’s true, if you happen to be a 12-year-old girl in 2011.

If you’re the chaperone who’s been pulled along to “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” however, you’d be forgiven for thinking his movie looks just like, say, 2009′s “Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience,” or Miley Cyrus’ “Best of Both Worlds Concert” before that.

But this is not a place for cynicism. Bieber’s world — at least as edited for mass consumption — is a refreshingly wholesome universe, where a young superstar is good-natured and grateful, says grace before every meal, and spends all his free time on the tour bus tweeting. He also likes to hug, a lot.

In other words, he’s the perfect first crush, and this is the perfect movie for someone currently experiencing that crush. “Never Say Never” recounts the history fans undoubtedly know by heart, starting off with baby pictures and home videos, showing a talented kid who eventually becomes a YouTube sensation, before facing his first night at Madison Square Garden. Most of the movie leads up to and includes that 2010 show, packing in guests like Cyrus, Usher, and Jaden Smith along with two dozen songs, from the swoonworthy “One Less Lonely Girl” to the undeniably hooky “Baby.” Plus, we get to watch Bieber shake his hair in 3D.

Any adult could guess that this upbeat, carefully-packaged promotional tool – slickly directed by “Step Up” veteran Jon Chu – was produced by Bieber’s management. But all tweens will see is their front-row seat to the Best. Concert. Ever. At least until their new crush comes along next year.

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When you’re a YouTube sensation, what’s left to learn?

By Pete Hammond of Box Office Magazine

The surprising thing about the new behind-the-scenes documentary Justin Bieber: Never Say Never is that it should have appeal well beyond the star’s young, adoring female fan base. The film is a really entertaining look at the Bieber phenomenon; the music in Never Say Never is great and Bieber proves himself to be the real thing as a musician and performer. This 3D film should have fans flocking to theatres on opening weekend, and word of mouth should guarantee a strong box office return perhaps eclipsing similar past music docs about other current teen faves Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. Profits should be huge when it hits DVD.

The picture, which attempts to be a real inside look at Bieber, his rise and his current fame, revolves around the 2010 tour for his CD and builds with mounting suspense to his performance at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Unlike the Cyrus and Jonas films, this one does not aspire to be a filmed concert with a few extras. Perhaps because Bieber is the first YouTube born and bred pop star, footage exists of every point in his young life and career and is used liberally to tell the story of this young, musically gifted Canadian who rocketed to fame with lightning speed. The film opens with those early YouTube postings and cleverly weaves in the Bieber tale with engaging, if carefully chosen, segments tracking his everyday life on the road. Jon Chu smartly directs and uses his experience from Step Up 2: The Streets and Step Up 3D to load this one with energy and style. Cho tries to go beyond the expected concert footage to create a storyline that gets the audience involved in every aspect of the tour and the kid’s life, including lots of home movie-style footage. One sequence in which Bieber becomes ill, threatening the whole enterprise, is expertly handled and craftily edited for maximum impact. Of course the show will go on, it always does, but to his credit Chu manages to put some doubt and real-life problems into the mix.

Along the way there are various cameos from Cyrus and Jaden Smith (Bieber performed the song “Never Say Never” with him for the film The Karate Kid) but both get in the way of the real story here. As the film is designed for Bieber’s fans, Chu never really gets too far beneath the surface of the real showbiz tale, so family, associates and Bieber manager Scooter Braun all come off like saints. Anything that isn’t remotely favorable to the young star and his crew is quickly glossed over, but this film’s goal is to be entertaining, not a warts-and-all expose of instant teen stardom. On that level it succeeds beyond expectations.

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I got a fever and the only prescription is more Bieber!

By Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York

Bieber mania reaches its zenith! Pessimists will liken Jon Chu’s polished and proficient all-access documentary to an apocalyptic sign of the times. (An adolescent phenom gets a triumphalist big-screen biography? Where’s that razor?) The converted shall preach the gospel with ear-shattering shrieks and hands raised in heart-shaped ecstasy. Can there be a middle ground?

Born to a teenage mother and raised in a single-parent household, the 16-year-old Bieber gained prominence through a series of YouTube videos that caught the attention of R&B sensation Usher and talent manager Scooter Braun. Both are among the many talking heads that testify to the megastar’s capacities, and the glowing assessments are understandable. Beneath the innocu-pop surface is a kid with a ton of musical aptitude (home videos show him playing the drums as if it were an innate instinct). But as he’s now a corporate commodity—one that can easily sell out Madison Square Garden, where the film’s mostly ho-hum 3-D concert footage was shot—it’s unlikely his abilities will be given room to develop properly.

Chu does his best to humanize his subject, showing him surrounded by devoted friends and family, and wringing much drama from an on-the-road vocal-cord strain. Yet the singer’s massive celebrity dictates that the overall arc must be glibly inspirational. Still, the biggest surprise is that Bieber seems consistently unfazed by all the cooks in the kitchen; it’s as if he’s holding something special back, to be unveiled at a later date. Hopefully, the machine won’t grind this one down before his prime.

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Justin Bieber: Never Say Never

By Peter Travers of Rolling Stone

Never Say Never is a documentary that takes us into the factory that manufactured Justin Bieber. Don’t get me wrong. Bieber has energy, musicianship, a smile as thick and full as his hair, and genuine comic flair (check him out with Dana Carvey’s Church Lady on SNL). But isn’t 16 (he’ll hit 17 on March 1st) a little young for a cinematic monument? Just sayin’.

Yes, fans, Never Say Never is also a 3D concert film to delight the shy 13-year-old with braces that lives in all of us. Bieber fever spikes big time when our star pulls a fan from the audience at every show to sing “One Less Lonely Girl.” Still there are tolerance levels to consider. The Bieb croons “baby baby baby baby” more times than Lindsay Lohan pleads “not guilty.” After a while the movie starts to feel like lethal injection by bubblegum.

There is a mitigating “but.” Never Say Never exerts a tantalizing, even perverse, fascination even without meaning to. Not in the concert scenes, which gin up suspense by making us that think that JB’s throat infection might stall his Manhattan concert debut at Madison Square Garden. Talk about a fake out. It’s Bieber’s own story that pulls you in. He was born in Canada to a teen mom, Patti Mallette, dad, Jeremy Bieber, moving on to marry and have two more children. Home movies show us a talented tot drum beating a chair. YouTube videos show that gift develop enough to attract Scooter Braun as a manager and Usher as a mentor. The movie, with appearances by all of the above, barely skims the surface of those years. What we do see is mom, dad, Braun, Usher, vocal coach Mama Jan Smith and the burgeoning Team Bieber claiming they only want the best for the boy as he goes through a punishing 84-date concert tour. Group hug.

The most telling moment in the film comes when Bieber and Braun recall Madonna’s remarks regarding Michael Jackson and how fame robbed him of his childhood. “Don’t let that happen to me,” says Bieber. The chorus of “never” that follows doesn’t really allay concerns. When director Jon M. Chu isn’t focused on the screaming fans, you can see those concerns seep into the fabric of film. A faux-sexy Bieber duet on “Overboard” with a scarily assertive Miley Cyrus is its own cautionary fable, as is the Bieber rap with

Jaden Smith, 12, on “Never Say Never,” the theme from Smith’s film, The Karate Kid. You can practically hear all the promotional elements click into place.  Maybe I’m reading too much into a movie meant only as a slick souvenir for Bieber fans. Maybe not.

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‘Justin Bieber: Never Say Never’ is ever charming

By Scott Bowles of USA Today

Even if you’re not much of a fan, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never isn’t as painful as you might expect.

Unless you’re a 10-year-old girl and are said fan, in which case you might find there to be too much talking and not enough baby, baby, baby.

Such is the quandary for the 16-year-old crooner and his shiny happy 3-D concert film: To continue courting the prepubescents who made him an international star or woo the older fans who will likely sustain him.

Bieber and director Jon M. Chu choose the former, as Never remains as wispy as his ballads. While the film makes clear Bieber is a wunderkind who wants to be seen more as a Justin Timberlake than a Rick Astley, his movie retreats from anything near the portrait that Michael Jackson’s This Is It posthumously became.

That’s a shame, because there was drama in Bieber’s life. He grew up poor to a single mom in Ontario, Canada, and became a sensation only after posting his second-place finish in a singing competition on YouTube.

Never, though, touches only briefly on that childhood. And though Bieber taught himself to play several instruments, the film whisks past his talents to get to his bangs — and does nothing to risk Never’s G-rating.

Still, Never works as a gum-snapper concert movie and does provide a glimpse into instant stardom in the Twitter generation. Cameos by Jaden Smith and Miley Cyrus serve as humorous reminders that Hollywood is populated by lottery winners.

The movie, too, knows its fan base, from gap-toothed girls to the moms who know his moves a little too well. His high-topped feet and liquid locks play almost too well in 3-D: Fans’ heads blocking your view aren’t in the theater, they’re on screen.

That Never doesn’t work as a biopic isn’t a surprise. Bieber’s too young to paint a picture with much context. As loud as Transformers and as happy as a Teletubby, Never is as drama-free as the songs it belts.

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Justin Bieber: Never Say Never’ review: Never

By Peter Hartlaub of San Fransisco Chronicle

Justin Bieber loves his grandfather. He studies chemistry on the tour bus, gives tickets to fans who couldn’t get into the show and visits a girl playing violin at the same outdoor spot where he used to sing for cash – offering her words of encouragement.

It’s a disappointment to see the teen pop star hop in a tour bus. This is a boy who should be traveling across rainbows on the back of a unicorn.

Is Justin Bieber the new prophet? “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” doesn’t directly answer this question (or, technically, pose it), but the answer is obvious, based on fan enthusiasm. The audience of mostly preteen girls at our screening screamed hysterically during the pre-movie prompt that tells people to put on their 3-D glasses.

Is this a good movie? That’s a tougher question. Young fans will lose their minds, although that would have happened if the film consisted of an hour and 45 minutes of Bieber brushing his teeth. Adult chaperones who care nothing of the star’s music will find the film surprisingly tolerable. Everyone else should proceed with caution.

Three of the four people who get the most camera time are “Never Say Never” producers, so we knew this wasn’t going to be an expose. They fiercely protect the brand, to the point that Bieber often comes off as a smiling, impish, perfectly coiffed cipher. Video from his pre-fame childhood reveals more than recent footage. How will Bieber, who turns 17 in a couple of weeks, avoid becoming the next Leif Garrett? Come up with your own answer, because Team Bieber isn’t going to explore the question.

Director Jon Chu does sneak some vegetables in with the Bieber-mania, offering an interesting account of how Bieber’s manager bypassed industry rules and used social networking to accomplish in one year what would normally take eight. Bieber looks conveniently heroic when a show is canceled, but the accompanying explanation of vocal cord strain borders on educational. And the frequent interviews with squealing Bieber fans are very entertaining.

What’s that, 11-year-old girls? You were nodding off during the previous two paragraphs? Then let’s get down to the information you want to know. Here’s “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” by the numbers …

– Bieber points toward the audience in 3-D: five times.

– Takes his shirt off: six.

– Shaves his face, completely unnecessarily: one.

One more thing about this film. The 3-D is a rip-off. Most of the movie appears to be shot in 2-D, with several three-dimensional scenes weaved in from a Madison Square Garden concert. But then again, when Bieber flips his feathered hair, his aura of wonderfulness is projected to the world in 6-D. So just be glad you don’t have to pay triple the regular price.

– Advisory: This film contains scenes of shirtless Bieber, including one where he blow-dries his hair. He also eats a doughnut out of a garbage can.

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Structure mars the documentary about the young singer, but his fans won’t care.

By Mark Olsen of Los Angeles Times

“Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” is part concert film, part brand consolidation, something designed to function as both an introduction for the uninitiated to this pop music singing-and-dancing sensation and a keepsake totem for his ravenous, heavy-spending fans.

This division of intent never quite coheres, as the momentum of the concert sequences is broken up by lots of back story on his unlikely meteoric rise, and the concert audio is mixed so that the shrieking of Bieber’s audience often overwhelms the music.

Though there is something teasingly contemporary about Bieber and his omni-bangs — YouTube and Twitter play a big role in his origin story — there is also an undercurrent of plucky old-fashioned showbiz in the way his career is being handled, measured in record sales and concert tickets.

For all the new-media trappings, Bieber’s success was initially pushed forward by what his manager, Scooter Braun, refers to as the “hand-to-hand combat” of winning over one radio station at a time.

Strictly as a piece of filmmaking, “Never Say Never” is a bit of a mess. Director Jon M. Chu creates an early structuring device of counting down the days to Bieber’s sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden, but then often lets that drive drop, in particular during a long biographical middle section.

Additionally, the main concert footage used throughout the film is from that show at the Garden, so building up to something at the same time it’s being shown really drains the drama from the moment.

Bieber is a mix of intuitive performer and apparent quick study. As a dancer, his style is endearingly awkward, as if the 16-year-old still has not quite figured out how his body works. When he reaches out to touch Miley Cyrus during an onstage duet — eliciting squeals of delight from the crowd — it is a move of practiced stagecraft, not an expression of emotion.

Yet beneath his polish there is still something unpracticed and a bit goofy to Bieber and his ever-present team of handlers. When a random girl is plucked night after night from the audience for him to serenade onstage, he hands her a big bouquet of roses; as he sings a solo acoustic number, he hangs over the crowd seated in a giant heart. Bieber seems to sit at some rare intersection of the newfangled and the traditional, where camera phones coexist sweetly with swooning romance.

In the film’s most disarming moment, Bieber stops in front of a young girl playing the violin on the street in his hometown. She asks if he’s Justin Bieber and he tells her he used to play guitar in that very same spot. The look of affection, surprise and swelling pride on her face shows his odd ability to make his Follow Your Dream narrative transcend its greeting-card corniness into something almost believable. Or perhaps that should be Beliebable.

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Movie Review: Justin Bieber, Never Say Never

By Orlando Sentinel

There will be plenty of time for trashing hotel rooms down the road. A Neverland Ranch seems decades away. He’ll be botching somebody’s national anthem soon enough.

So for now, don’t fight the fever, and don’t hate those who have it. Justin Bieber, the first YouTube-created pop superstar, belongs to those who discovered him long before his “team” discovered him, worked him, promoted him and packaged him for “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” a 3-D concert film that serves up the boy and the myth.

But 3-D or not, the film about the mop-topped Canadian, who will turn 17 on March 1, doesn’t let us get very close to “the talent.” We get an hour and 45 minutes of movie that runs through most of his hit songs (“Baby,” “One Less Lonely Girl”) as performed on an 86-city concert tour.

We’re served snippets of home movies that chronicle his meteoric rise, a mocking moment of hair flipping and a few shirt-changing scenes guaranteed to make girls squeal. But there’s not even a full minute of sound bites with only Justin Bieber talking. That’s how you protect an image.

Miley Cyrus shares the stage with him for a song, passing the teeny-bopper baton. JustinBieber sings with his idols, Boyz II Men. More cynically, Jaden Smith comes on for a song, pimped into the limelight by parents Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.

It’s all good, clean fun, with 10-year-old fans declaring they plan to marry him and older women wanting to baby him. (His baby pictures are a fixture on projection screens at his shows.) The film retells the Bieber myth through interviews with his mentors, the most famous being the singer Usher and the super-producer L.A. Reid.

But Justin’sBieber’s devoutly Christian mom, Pattie Malette, who had him in tiny Stratford, Ontario, when she was 18, gets limited screen time. (She has been known to get off message, after all.) His dad, who left Mom when Justin was 10 months old? A few tears, and even fewer words.

Choreographer-director Jon Chu (“Step Up 3D“) may do little with the 3-D format, but the movie does capture some of Justin’s inherent playfulness and goes to some pains to paint him as “normal” — even when his voice coach, “Mama” Jan Smith, informs him that “this is your normal now.” His teen-boy bona fides are established by putting him on the basketball court with childhood pals.

And the talent is obvious, even in those earliest videos, when he was busking for spare change outside the Avon TheatreÖ in Stratford, uncertain of pitch but covering soul and R&B tunes with conviction, confidence and passion.

But will we ever see the “real” Justin Bieber, up close and personal? Never say never, kids, but that won’t come until this fever subsides. For now, “Never Say Never” is about as revealing as a Canadian snowmobile suit.

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Only for true Beliebers

By Lou Lumenick of New York Post

Anyone who’s even vaguely aware of this 16-year-old’s unlikely rise to musical superstardom isn’t going to learn anything new from “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” an interminable documentary punctuated by perhaps half an hour of heavily edited 3-D performance footage.

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s the story: The child of a teenage single mother in Stratford, Ontario, is a mediocre soccer player in school who captivates audiences as a preteen street magician.

His mother puts videos up on YouTube, where he’s “discovered” at age 12 by Scooter Braun — as his camera-hogging manager reminds us roughly every 30 seconds.

Scooter introduces Justin to his musical mentor, Usher. The androgynous teenager becomes a social-networking phenomenon, drawing successively larger crowds as he tours North America’s radio stations and shopping malls, charming one and all.

Besides much redundant archival footage, there are what appear to be carefully staged scenes of this “regular” kid (who does dozens of concert dates a year) hanging with his Canadian buddies and his “extended dysfunctional family” backstage.

There are fleeting glimpses of Justin’s father and Justin looking at school books. But there’s virtually no sense of what this scrawny teen (shown bare-chested several times) is actually like as a person (he smiles a lot) or what kind of life he really lives.

Instead, we see endless montages of Justin and Scooter distributing complimentary tickets to fans.

The film slowly builds up to Justin’s first appearance at Madison Square Garden, where his show sold out in 22 minutes.

He pouts briefly for the camera when a cold forces the cancellation of an earlier stop on the tour.

But everything is OK on the big night after fans tweet their get-well wishes.

It’s easy for a grown-up to be cynical about “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” which amounts to a G-rated infomercial for the Bieber brand.

Tween fans priced out of his shows will likely be more than thrilled with the unremarkable performance footage (with guest artists like Miley Cyrus) supervised by director Jon M. Chu (“Step Up 3D”).

Not to mention a montage of Justin flipping his trademark locks.

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Justin Bieber: Never Say Never

By Genevieve Koski of AV Club

Never Say Never, a concert documentary following the rise of Justin Bieber from YouTube hit to Madison Square Garden headliner, is essentially a propaganda film, indoctrinating teens and skeptical parents into the Bieber Army one adorable baby photo and pandering fan montage at a time. Occasionally, it’s almost convincing: For a 16-year-old, Bieber is surprisingly charismatic, and the film does an admirable job of portraying the pure, distilled joy of teenagers in the presence of their idol without resorting to mockery. However, the film’s premise—that Bieber achieved his superstardom through years of hard work overcoming towering obstacles—is so ludicrously flawed that everything built upon it borders on self-parody.

As if Never Say Never’s “reach for the stars” narrative wasn’t telegraphed loudly enough by its title, it becomes deafeningly clear in the first 10 minutes, which intercuts home-video footage of Baby Bieber singing and banging on a tiny drum set with dynamic, 3D footage of his sold-out MSG show. Interviews with Bieber’s mother, manager, vocal coach, and dozens of ecstatic, braces-wearing fans reiterate again and again how talented and hardworking and cute Bieber is, and footage of him pulling his giant tour bus into his small Ontario hometown to spend a day hanging with his old friends and sleeping in his childhood bed is calibrated to achieve maximum “awwww.” It’s the sort of sanctification that should be familiar to anyone who’s lived through a teen-idol supremacy, but it crosses into parody when discussion turns toward Bieber’s discovery by manager Scooter Braun in 2008.

Braun characterizes his nurturing of Bieber’s career as a major gamble, and his protégé’s success as a grassroots movement, succeeding outside the Disney/Nickelodeon machine—never mind that Bieber had the combined powers of R&B star Usher and record impresario Antonio “L.A.” Reid backing his career. A few months spent doing radio-station gigs is represented as the height of road-warrior determination, and Bieber’s (admittedly endearing) interactions with fans in person and on Twitter are depicted as saintly acts of graciousness. There’s nothing wrong with achieving fame quickly, but portraying an 18-month career as a long, arduous struggle for success is laughable and borderline-offensive.

Although he’s in nearly every frame, Bieber is an elusive figure in the movie: He happily mugs for the camera, notably in a hilarious moment where he flips his signature hair-swoop in glorious slow-motion 3D to the strains of Etta James’ “At Last.” But he never engages with it, leaving his various handlers to craft his legend. Passing mention is given to the alienation and pressure inherent in teen-idoldom, but it comes via an interview with Miley Cyrus, and quickly segues into glossy footage of them dueting onstage. There’s no room for reflection when there’s 3D concert footage to get to, and director Jon Chu brings the same lively camerawork to the MSG performance as he did to the similarly pretty-but-vacant Step Up 3D. But like its 3D sequences, Never Say Never has only the illusion of depth; beyond the shiny visuals and trumped-up origin story, there’s nothing but flat emptiness.

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Justin Bieber: A Vague Presence in His Own Origin-Myth Doc

By Nick Pinkerton of Village Voice

The Bieber movie, a concert experience and origin-myth documentary, is not good—not that it needs to be. It is draggily paced and lacks felicity of form; the 3-D is a rip-off and the songs are pap, save a snippet of Etta James singing “At Last” while Bieber’s glossy fringe sways in slow-motion. The buildup to a Madison Square Garden climax-concert roughly structures Never Say Never; a throat infection creates the threat of cancellation, before “Get well” Tweets reinforce Bieber’s rededication to showbiz grind and “u,” the fans. Interspersed is a retelling of Bieber’s journey, from small-town boy in Stratford, Ontario, to the outbreak of Bieber Fever. A convincing case is made that the YouTube phenom was a talented kid with a knack for sponging up Top 20 radio styles when promoter “Scooter” Braun discovered him. From there, the movie admiringly details the stoking of a phenomenon by Braun and Team Bieber; ennobling marketing hustle, JB: NSN is A Hard Day’s Night half devoted to Brian Epstein. There’s no scrimping on the Bieber here—we see him serenading onstage, shirtless in the dressing room, in home videos, and in “candid” hometown visits—but he’s a curiously vague presence, obscured in the shadow of this monument to his brand.