Review: ‘Mindless Behavior: All Around the World’ is full of energy

Less a documentary than an acutely positioned marketing tool, “Mindless Behavior: All Around the World” delivers a chaotically high-energy burst of performance and behind-the-scenes footage for fans of the slickly produced hip-hop boy band.

Though less skillfully assembled than the cagily self-serving Justin Bieber and Katy Perry movies from last year, there’s still a group portrait to be gleaned amid the Cuisinart editing and repetitive “we do it for the fans/just be yourself” platitudes from Princeton, Roc Royal, Ray Ray and Prodigy: namely, one that paints this carefully assembled preteen quartet with high-wattage smiles and dazzling moves as a mighty hardworking foursome. (Like boot camp grunts preparing for a media offensive, these plucked-from-obscurity kids were holed up for two years of intensive dance training before a single was ever released.)

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As ever with vehicles like this, the best moments break free from practiced image manipulation, as when a late-night tour-bus pilgrimage to the Jackson family’s Indiana home turns into an impromptu block party with neighborhood fans.

Adoring girls will discover these youngsters love their mothers too, as when impresario Walter Millsap secretly arranges a tearful onstage reunion with the boys’ moms midconcert.

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“Mindless Behavior: All Around the World.”

MPAA rating: G. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

In general release.

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