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.
