"Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey" (The Guardian 16/05/14)

Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey **

Dir: Ramona S. Diaz. With: Arnel Pineda, Neal Schon, Jonathan Cain. 101 mins. Cert: 15

Softrockers 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 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.

Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey opens in selected cinemas today, ahead of its DVD release on June 30.