"OMG you can reach and touch his face"
Thursday night, Rocks Off went to the first midnight screening of Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, in 3D no less. Yes we had a chaperone, but the late hour and the theater's location wasn't conducive to masses of screaming girls.
The location we saw it at was the only one in our vicinity with tickets available. Not bad for a midnight showing of a film arguably aimed at people who are right now as of this writing probably learning about the Great Depression in social studies class, or sitting bleary-eyed and dreaming of the shirtless Bieber they saw last night.
Four times, by our count, not that we were literally counting.
On first glance, a 16-year-old boy doesn't deserve a film about his life and career, chronicling his ten-day journey to a sold-out Madison Square Garden gig. He hasn't lived enough yet, not in the greater sense that he hasn't paid for an abortion, been laid off, or had his car repossessed.
But as the first pop star fully formed by social media - discovered on YouTube, coddled by Facebook, communicating to fans and friends via Twitter - Bieber was already overdue for a movie, and one in that uniquely 21st-century medium of 3D. Even after two years in that pop machine, you can already see that that mechanism is reaching an apex. Rightfully so, the Beebs seems to already be diversifying his personal stock.
The film caters to the Canadian teen idol's young fans, making expert use of the 3D effects during the loads of live footage - "OMG you can reach and touch his face" - while reeling in parents and the otherwise uninitiated with his origin story: Raised by a single mother and his grandparents in Stratford, Ontario, learning drums at the age of three, playing guitar soon after, and seemingly born to destroy the hearts of women of all ages.
You see the kid age over just the course of the two hours of Never Say Never. We watch him shave. Yes, he seems to be able to grow facial hair, and his voice slowly gets deeper in turns. He has a deeper register than he gets credit for. In five years he's going to have a baritone if the vocal coach that tours with him does her job right.
The backstage scenes also show Bieber's defiant streak. Who knows, maybe this will be a preview of things to come. Neck tattoos, shattered paparazzi cameras, and wrecked motorcycles seem to be par the course for people in his position.
