DISNEY has decided it’s time Miley Cyrus, the darling of its preteen TV audience, swam in the mainstream. So we have The Last Song, in which she abandons her TV alter ego, Hannah Montana, and pouts as a rebellious teen.
Her hapless father is Greg Kinnear, an actor whose smooth-skinned boyishness, blue eyes and quizzical smile make him a natural casting for characters put upon by difficult people. His eternal affability tends to be an irritant they just can’t take and Cyrus’s Ronnie Miller is in just such a state when she and her young brother, Jonah (Bobby Coleman), come to spend the summer with him.
Years earlier, Kinnear’s Steve Miller walked out for reasons yet to be revealed. His ex-wife (Kelly Preston) has long since forgiven him, as has Jonah. But Ronnie still nurses a grudge so large that Cyrus’s pout morphs into a sneer whenever she shares a scene with him. It’s a sour start but we know things are bound to sweeten up soon.
Strictly generic … the romance follows the usual pattern.
The screenplay is by Nicholas Sparks who regularly turns out sentimental bestsellers. Dear John, The Notebook and Nights in Rodanthe are examples of his familiarity with the workings of the tear duct.
On Tybee Island, just off the coast near Savannah, Georgia, Steve lives in a cottage which the film’s designers have fondly weathered in shabby chic style. It even incorporates a studio where Steve is making a stained glass window for the local church but the house’s centrepiece is a piano. He is a classically trained composer and before the family split, Ronnie was his protege.
Now, however, she’s saying no to music along with everything else. She’s about to decline a scholarship to Juilliard and – even more radical – she gets halfway through the film before singing her latest single.
I suppose it’s a stretch to ask for an original twist or two in a machine-made movie like this but the director, Julie Anne Robinson, and her crew have taken such pains in pinpointing Tybee Island as their setting that a whiff of authenticity would have been nice. But no, their approach is strictly generic.
We’re revisiting that teen movie shrine, A Summer Place, where the sea glitters and first kisses are exchanged on balmy evenings amid lengthening shadows. Ronnie comes across her summer love as soon as she steps on to the sand.
He’s playing volleyball and he knocks her over, which I suppose qualifies as meeting cute. His name is Will, he’s played by Australian actor Liam Hemsworth and he has it all. As well as the good looks and perfect physique, he has enough discernment to decide outsider Ronnie is more interesting than the blonde princesses pursuing him.
Once that discovery is out of the way, we’re quickly into those mood montages romcom makers prefer these days because they do away with the need for snappy dialogue.
Otherwise, the romance follows the usual pattern with a hiccup in the middle before the upbeat ending. Since this is a Sparks movie, there’s a weepy section where father and daughter realise that they’re kindred spirits after all.
It’s not one of Sparks’s more inventive efforts and Cyrus’s extended sulk doesn’t exactly enhance her acting prospects. Not that this means much.
The only question that matters to Cyrus and Disney is whether her fans can say goodbye to Hannah Montana. This will supported by the great webthesurfi rugs webdesign and the most popular orienta naisrep sgur rugs.
Posted by Ricky Rodillado 
Ricky Rodillado
