By Chris Tookey
Last updated at 2:49 AM on 18th February 2011
Verdict: The infant phenomenon in 3D but with no great depth
Rating: 
However lengthy or short-lived his career may turn out to be, Justin Bieber is sure to go down in history as the first YouTube-created pop star.
The encouraging aspect of this musical documentary is that it proves the 16-year-old Canadian does have the talent to go with his precocious self-confidence.
Everyone involved in this feature-length promotion of the Bieber brand seems to have been briefed to say things along the lines of, as one of them puts it, he’s ‘just a regular kid who had a dream’. But this is the exact opposite of the truth.
Bieber fever: Justin Bieber's life is looked at from a very superficial and slick view
His voice is exceptionally strong, he’s a freakishly competent guitarist, drummer and pianist, he can hold the stage like an old pro, and he can dance well enough to lead the kind of routines performed by Madonna and Michael Jackson.
The film is a slickly packaged, deliberately superficial summary of Justin’s career so far, illustrated with everything from baby pictures to his striking first efforts on YouTube.
It’s centred on heavily edited 3D concert footage — about half an hour’s worth — of his sellout performance to screaming fans at Madison Square Garden. The nearest thing to suspense comes when he starts losing his voice just days before the event. Will Justin be well enough to go on?
Inside scoop: The 'revealing' film shows Justin with his entourage and his mother, Patti, pictured
The tension is hardly unbearable, since the film up to then has been interspersed with clips of him performing at the event.
The premise — that Justin has earned his superstar status through years of dedication, overcoming obstacles that would have defeated a person with less determination — is so hilariously untrue that it borders on self-parody.
He has been turned extremely quickly into a commercial product by some extremely canny businessmen, one of whom — the Island producer Antonio ‘L.A.’ Reid — inadvertently lets the cat out of the bag when he describes Bieber as the ‘Macaulay Culkin of the music industry’.
Culkin, the child-star of Home Alone, is nowadays best known for his convictions for drug abuse, and for taking his parents to court to gain control of the money he earned as a child star. Let’s hope Justin has cleaner habits and — despite coming from a broken home — more reliable parents.
The film is as cheerfully one-sided as a party political broadcast.
There’s no chance for any ‘unbelieber’ to question why a white, suburban Canadian child has adopted the dress sense and speech patterns of a black, urban rapper, or whether it is sensible to put a youth with a largely untrained voice through a punishing 84-date tour.
His entourage is portrayed equally uncritically, as devoted friends, fans and surrogate parents, who like nothing better than distributing free tickets to those who can’t afford to watch the prodigy live.
The film shows Justin’s voice is remarkable for his age, but derivative of Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears. And the songs he writes have nothing new to say: they’re not pop songs with the staying power of the great compositions of, say, Carole King or Neil Sedaka, both teenage prodigies themselves.
The most disturbing aspect of the film is that it shows Bieber has never known what it is to be professionally rejected or, worse still, ignored.
World domination: Justin Bieber arrives in Paris to promote his new movie
I know he was turned down by a few record companies, but that doesn’t compare with the toughening up that goes with touring venues where the public won’t listen. All that is invaluable experience for later on, when — as will inevitably happen — his career goes into decline and the girls now swearing undying love have moved on to someone new or just grown up.
Unlike them, I’m old enough to remember dozens of his predecessors, such as Seventies heart-throb Leif Garrett, now best known for his spectacular history of drug abuse and arrests by the police.
The Bieber film is also strongly reminiscent of Lonely Boy, a 1962 documentary about an even earlier teen sensation, Paul Anka, whose first hit, Diana (the first record I ever bought, at the age of seven), contained what I now recognise to be the crassest chat-up line of all time: ‘I’m so young and you’re so old / This, my darling, I’ve been told.’
Both films are about young Canadians blessed with precocious musical talent, both intercut concert footage with biographical material, and in both the child star invites a sobbing female fan on stage to be ‘personally’ serenaded.
Anka used to sing Put Your Head On My Shoulder; Bieber sings One Less Lonely Girl.
Most fans of Bieber won’t have heard of Anka, but he went on to have a lengthy if chequered career and wrote at least one masterpiece, the hilariously self-aggrandising lyric for My Way.
Let’s hope Bieber finds his own way, avoids being ripped off by too many of his hangers-on, remains on speaking terms with at least one of his parents — and lasts even half as long as Mr Anka.
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