Mike McCahill 

Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey review – lighter-waving rock doc

The story of how veteran US rockers Journey replaced their original frontman with a Filipino club singer raises some tricky issues that this film doesn't really address, writes Mike McCahill
  
  

Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey
Riven with underarticulated tensions … Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey Photograph: PR

Soft rockers Journey's unlikely revival – possibly sparked by their signature tune's appearance on the final Sopranos and the first Glee – takes another curious turn with this feature-length retrospective centred on Arnel Pineda, the Filipino club singer hired to replace frontman Steve Augeri weeks before a 2007 tour. Pineda's humility is a rare rockumentary commodity, but the film around him is riven with underarticulated tensions: any suspicion that the management might have employed third-world labour to enable the show to go on is simply shrugged off. "They should have picked someone from here," chirps one fan in passing, raising topics this triumphalist, lighter-waving item can't bring itself to address.

 

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