The Last Song

In The Last Song, Miley Cyrus plays Ronnie, an alienated teenage girl who's angry at the world, and not happy at all that her mother is sending her and her little brother, Jonah (Bobby Coleman), to live with their father (Greg Kinnear) in his beach-side home for the summer. You can automatically see the appeal of the character for Ms. Cyrus. She most likely saw it as a chance to shed her sunny Hannah Montana image, which she has made no secret that she is trying to escape from. I admire the effort, but this is not the vehicle to prove yourself a serious actress.

If anything, this could damage any future career goals. The film is relentlessly cornball, the emotions forced, and the plot a vague hook to hang a bunch of melodramatic situations upon. You also have to look at the fact that Cyrus just is not very good in the role. There is no anger, angst, or emotion in her performance. She's just scowling and looking moody at the camera all the time. Scene after scene, I kept on checking for something that showed she was building a real character, but there's never any evidence. I would say that maybe this was not the right role for her, but it's been highly publicized that screenwriter and author, Nicholas Sparks, wrote the character for her. It's a total miscalculation all around. Then again, it sort of fits here, since the entire movie is a complete and total miscalculation.

When Ronnie arrives at the beach-side town, she doesn't fit in at all. She wears a lot of black, and always has a scowl on her face. All the other inhabitants in the town are young 20-somethings that look like they walked in from an audition for a teen soap opera. Since she is not as buff, tan, or blonde as they are, they immediately shun her. Everyone, that is, except for Will (Liam Hemsworth). He's an attractive nice guy who falls for Ronnie at first sight. Of course, all of Will's friends are snooty and stuck up sorts who try to sabotage their relationship. We don't get to really know these characters. They just show up if the movie needs a contrived crisis for Ronnie and Will to work through. Of course, love ultimately prevails. The two get to know each other through a variety of montages, where we see them swimming, playing in the mud, making sand angels on the beach, and carving their names in trees. I can't be sure, but I think this movie holds the record for the most number of montages held in a single film. It's hard to tell, since some of them literally come one after another, with only seconds of dialogue to separate them.

The two have a lot of challenges ahead of them in their relationship. Ronnie was once a bright young classical pianist, and has even been accepted into Juilliard. But, she might not even go. Ever since her parents divorced, she's been angry at the world, and has even resorted to shoplifting once. This is why she's not happy about being with her dad for the summer. She still hasn't forgiven him for walking out on them. Dad had his reasons, of course, which we learn later on. As for Will, he has secrets of his own. He comes from a rich family, but finds his home life cold and unfeeling ever since a family tragedy made everything awkward at home. In true soap opera fashion, everything is treated as a bombshell. ("You're rich, and you didn't even tell me??") Ronnie's upset, because her dad walked out on her. Her little brother is upset, because he's growing apart from his dad. Will's upset, because he knows the secret of who started the fire at the local church, which Ronnie's dad blames himself for. Will's friends are upset, because they don't think Ronnie's good enough for him. With all this, did we really need an entire subplot devoted to Ronnie trying to save some sea turtle eggs from being eaten by raccoons?

Since The Last Song is based on a Nicholas Sparks novel (he co-wrote the script as well), the broader the emotion, the better. The movie fulfills another Sparks standard, in that someone must be stricken with a fatal disease (preferably cancer) at some point. It does not disappoint, and we can literally see it coming when a character casually mentions to Ronnie that they were sick for a while last year, but then immediately tells her not to worry and that "everything's okay". The cancer makes a surprise return, and we get a long, dragged-out sequence where goodbyes are said, tears are shed, and the music score hammers you over the head with emotion. This is a movie that previously showed little regard for subtlety, strong characters, or strong dialogue. When one of the characters becomes terminally ill, it gives the movie an excuse to go all out into offensively bad writing. The film's climactic moment is so heavy-handed and awkward, it shows a sign of restraint on the part of the filmmakers that they did not have the dying character show up dressed as an angel with a harp and wings, sitting on a cloud.

Seeing as this movie was designed from the ground up as a vehicle for Miley Cyrus to break out of her image, would it have killed the people behind the scenes to inject a little bit of life, honesty, or plausibility to the final product? This is a completely artificial wannabe tearjerker that doesn't get the emotions it so desperately clamors for, because we don't believe a second of it. I wish Cyrus the best of luck in her future career. I really do. But if she thinks this is the way to go, she's fooling herself.

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