Second opinion
U2 3D
Selected cinemas

I hate Bono. Preening twerp. The very act of entering the cinema and donning the 3D specs to watch him and his band prance through their latest marketing ploy made me want to spoon my eyes out in protest. But perhaps, I thought, this unique opportunity to see the Irish supergroup perform a South American concert in three dimensions - so close you can actually reach out and touch Bono's ego - might give me an insight into the ire I share with at least as many people as buy his silly records.

Why do we so dislike Bono, or Paul Hewson to give him his actual name? There are many reasons. He wrote the song Beautiful Day. He wrote the song Vertigo. He wrote the song... you get the idea - his music is a derivative sports-soundtrack only redeemed, if at all, by the fact that his friend The Edge has a neat rack of guitar-effects pedals and had a couple of OK ideas in 1985.

"Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby's head", Paul Hewson sings on Miracle Drug, conjuring the image of the millionaire star sneaking into maternity wards to sniff slimy tots as their new mothers look on in exhausted horror.

But then again The Kooks make rubbish music and I don't hate them nearly as much.  Here Paul Hewson is again using the plight of the Third World to promote himself as some sort of Gandhi figure even as his private equity firm, Elevation Partners, became a major shareholder in Forbes magazine, an organ devoted to celebrating the super-rich. Here he is again giving a shout out to Ireland, despite the fact that he transferred U2's business assets to Amsterdam to avoid paying tax in the nation that spawned him and threatens to build a huge, gaudy hotel in Dublin despite overwhelming local opposition.

How fitting, incidentally, that having made a speech at January's Davos conference confessing his "eco-sins" to Al Gore and promising to be better in future, he should now allow U23D to sponsor an American Nascar team.

It's a pity that the genuinely impressive photography here should have been trained on such an unworthy subject. The only defence of U23D is this: hearing these songs in a multiplex, mingling with the smell of stale hot-dogs and popcorn, you feel they have never found a more apt setting.