贾斯汀·比伯：永不言败

在这部纪录片中，我们不仅能看到贾斯汀·比伯巡回演唱会的片段，而且还能一窥比伯成名的路途。贾斯汀·比伯1994年出生在加拿大。在很小的时候，他就展示出了过人的歌唱和舞蹈天赋。后来，贾斯汀·比伯便开始在自己的家乡，安大略的斯特拉特福德的街头表演。比伯的妈妈把比伯比赛和表演的录像传到了YouTube上，目的是为了方便家人观赏。但却引来了众多网友的观看热潮。随后，贾斯汀·比伯在网络上变成了受人热捧的明星，并渐渐演变成了一种网络现象。接下来，贾斯汀·比伯依靠自己的才华和实力，一点一点地变成了这个世界上最手摸上去感到热得烫人权势大，气焰盛，使人不敢接近的超级明星。在影片的最高潮，我们看到已经变成巨星的贾斯汀·比伯在纽约的麦迪逊花园广场举办自己的演唱会。全世界都在为这个年轻人喝彩、而他就是活生生的美国梦的标本。NYT的这篇评论有典型的成人调侃论调，言语没有太过于harsh（还是我口味太重？），但至少也能让人看得会心一笑。转载过来大家一同欢乐欢乐。Jon M. Chu’s “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” is billed as a concert documentary, but fewer than half of its 105 minutes are devoted to Mr. Bieber onstage. That was the right choice, because he’s more engaging as a star than he’s ever likely to be as a performer. You don’t necessarily want to talk about sex when discussing someone whose fans are mostly adolescent girls, but Justin Bieber is nothing if not an old-fashioned, carefully constructed sex symbol, somewhere between a more knowing Donny Osmond and a less insinuating Elvis Presley. When the little girls understand you, music and personality are beside the point. Mr. Chu is certainly aware of this, given the close-up attention he lavishes on the priceless combination of eyes, hair and jawline, of smile, vocal timbre and self-confidence that have carried the waifish — but fit! — Mr. Bieber to pop-culture Valhalla. And while “Never Say Never” is an approved biography and marketing tool, in which the 16-year-old Mr. Bieber showcases his winsomeness and humility alongside his modest talents as a singer and dancer, Mr. Chu recognizes that the most compelling visual in this story is all those screaming girls. So he points the camera 180 degrees away from the star a fair bit of the time, and that view introduces a queasy note of apprehension into the otherwise wholesome picture. Occasionally you see a fan whose senses are particularly deranged by her love for Mr. Bieber, and you hope that his security team has her picture on file. Mr. Chu, who has experience in both 3-D filmmaking and stage spectacles (he directed the “Step Up” sequels), toes the company line the rest of the time, splicing together home movies from Mr. Bieber’s prefame years and shooting numerous boring segments with his handlers and coaches. It should be noted that the film’s producers include Mr. Bieber and his manager, Scooter Braun, a 29-year-old whose inflections and intensity recall the young Rob Morrow. The concert scenes are perfunctory, shot in the usual manner with the 3-D cameras gliding back and forth at knee level. A duet between Mr. Bieber and Miley Cyrus, just 16 months older, serves as a cautionary example of how quickly a child star can begin to look middle aged and irrelevant. Several appearances with Usher, on the other hand, demonstrate what it means to own the stage. Next to Usher, his mentor, Mr. Bieber just fades away. In the film’s best and weirdest shot, Mr. Chu zooms in close as Mr. Bieber flings his head back and forth in slow motion, waving his famously floppy hair in a moment that’s both hilarious and creepy, especially when you’re watching in 3-D. At 70 or 80 minutes, reduced to crazy fans, backstage atmosphere and home-movie footage of Mr. Bieber playing hockey and pounding the drums, “Never Say Never” could have been entirely satisfying. At 105 minutes it’s exhausting, even though it has been expertly cut together. Mr. Bieber is amiable company, but on screen, at least, he also projects the opacity of the single-minded and self-assured — the quality that, along with good looks and competent management, makes him such an ideal repository for other people’s dreams. Everyone involved in “Never Say Never” is working overtime to prove that he is, as one of them puts it, “just a regular kid who had a dream,” while everything about the movie screams the opposite. 原评论地址 http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/movies/11justin.html?ref=movies