“Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” was simply confusing.  It was footage from his performance at Madison Square Garden, a documentary chronicling his “rags-to-riches” story, and an anticipation-ridden countdown of his aforementioned performance all at once. 

I wish that movie would have just made its mind up because it was demanding as hell for me, as a viewer, to be taken into so many disjointed directions.  I don’t get it, am I supposed to be worried that Justin may have lost his voice before his Madison Square Garden performance, that you’ve been showing me footage of for the past hour and a half?  You’re playing the dramatic music, Justin looks disparaged, but I know that come the evening of his show, Bieber totally puts on the greatest performance of his career, so what am I supposed to do?  Pretend that there is some level of uncertainty? 

Then there is the arbitrary “countdown” utility, which really seems like an afterthought in retrospect.  Punctuated in between scenes, you will see a sprawling shot representative of Bieber’s big night with gigantic purple text at the bottom indicating how many days are left until his performance at MSG. 

At first it seems like, “Ok, I get it, this movie is weaving between a narration of Justin’s ‘story’ by his relatives and friends,” but then they start forgetting to let us know when days pass, and we go from Day 8 to Day 4 and then you’re wondering if there is any significance at all to these big purple indicators that seem to appear when they feel like it. 

The “countdown” makes the picture even more muddled by the random, spastic moments where the camera suddenly appears at MSG, with Justin performing one of his hit singles successfully in front of thousands of maniacs in craft store Bieber regalia. 

Are we counting down the days to the show or are we there?  What do you want me to feel during your film, Mr. Chu?

There are short-lived moments where you genuinely feel touched by Bieber’s “team” going outside of the arenas during his “My World” tour and giving floor tickets to individuals who weren’t fortunate enough to afford admittance to the pricey experience. 

This affected me more than the moments where they choose a random girl from the audience to come on stage during “One Less Lonely Girl” to get serenaded by Bieber with flowers and occasional caressing, because that just got mad awkward after the first 20 seconds because the girl is just sitting there crying and laughing hysterically in front of an audience of thousands of little girls, while Bieber shifts between shuffling his little legs around and paying his dues to the girl sitting on the stool in the middle of the stage with the flowers in her lap. 

It was nice, I guess.

In short, this movie was a confusing mess glossed and packaged like a traditional MTV production with high definition and sexy editing that wasn’t able to distract me from the incoherence at the root of the film.

Oh yeah, 3D.