Taking the inspirational football and running with it, director Ramona S. Diaz crafts a film that's relentlessly sunny and upbeat, even when Pineda is describing his rough-and-tumble childhood on the streets of Manila and his brushes with drug addiction. How he ended up with the gig as Journey's new frontman was more a stroke of luck than skill; founding member Neal Schon stumbled upon a YouTube clip of him performing Journey songs in his native country and promptly flew him out to lay down some test tracks with the whole group, which had already seen a number of new faces come and go over the years. After a shaky beginning, Pineda found his footing in the studio and was soon given the official thumbs up and hit the road with the band on an international tour. In the film's version of events, the newbie won over skeptical fans everywhere he went (he does sing a pretty mean "Don't Stop") and made Journey more relevant than it had been in years. (Although I'd argue that The Sopranos finale, plus the pilot episode of Glee might have done more to improve the band's pop culture reputation than Pineda's hiring.)

Those hoping for a documentary that seriously grapples with the day-to-day existence of a rock band -- think Metallica: Some Kind of Monster or Dig! -- won't get any of those juicy details from Don't Stop Believin', which glosses over the business and interpersonal side of things in favor of giving audiences an inspirational piece of wish-fulfillment: a feature-length version of the original Susan Boyle viral video. (One particularly intriguing idea that's introduced and then never addressed again is the notion that the audiences who turn up at Journey's concerts want to hear all the same songs played precisely the same way, effectively turning them into their own tribute band. A better documentary would have explored this question, contrasting Journey's example with someone like Bob Dylan, who has continued to reinvent his back catalogue in live shows, sometimes to his fans' chagrin.) Any hurdles that are thrown up in the band's way are quickly leapfrogged over and the future is never anything short of bright. Not every rockumentary needs to be a seedy Behind the Music-like expose, of course, but watching Don't Stop Believin' one always gets the sense that there's a larger story that Diaz can't -- or simply doesn't want to -- tell.

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