Secondhand Reviews: "The Last Song"

Rated PG for a few instances of strong language, and a scene of teen drinking (not involving Miley). 

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At last, the film that will undoubtedly give one of the great actresses of our age, Miley Cyrus, the Oscar she deserves, and will certainly prove to doubters that Nicholas Sparks is not just a brilliant writer but that it has been a major injustice that he has never won the Pulitzer Prize! And furthermore... oh, wait a minute... I just remembered it isn't actually April 1st any more! Oh, well, I suppose this tactic would have been a poor choice for April Fools anyhow... nobody would have believed it.

In "The Last Song", we meet a dysfunctional family (in the movies, is there any other kind?) who have long since split up, with the son still maintaining a good relationship with dad but the daughter, "Ronnie" (Miley Cyrus) refusing any kind of contact with him and "acting out" her resentments by becoming a bit of a rebel. When both kids are brought to stay with dad for the summer (obviously not at Ronnie's request) the relationship slowly begins to mend itself, as Ronnie also meets and begins a relationship with a local boy with a couple of major secrets.

A couple of months ago, "Dear John" actually shocked audiences by being a halfway decent film adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. But it did that by changing a number of the standard Sparks plot elements from the source material and taking it in a direction Sparks would never have thought of. In "The Last Song", Sparks himself co-writes the screenplay for the first time, so you know better than to expect that to repeat itself. So, in THIS movie you know for a fact that at least one major character will die, that a different major character will have not one but several big secrets that will put up barriers between himself and the object of his affections, and that the characters will not behave in a manor ever associated with actual human beings. How do we know this? Because this is a Nicholas Sparks story, and those things ALWAYS happen! 

However, this is a Sparks story with a bit of a twist... in spite of what you read about it being "adapted from the best selling novel" it was actually written as a screenplay first, after which point Sparks novelized it and published the book in advance. Furthermore, it was written specifically with Miley Cyrus in mind, and the lead was tailored for her. So we have a teen celebrity allegedly looking for a more serious role to expand her range, but having that role written to take advantage of her strengths... or should I more properly say, her weaknesses. Ronnie the alleged "rebel" is clearly portrayed as practically a model teenager... she has shoplifted ONCE and was seriously bothered by it and never repeated that action. She doesn't drink (and thus can't be accepted by the "bad crowd" that does), when she has a bit of money she doesn't hesitate to give it all away to the needy, and and makes a herculean effort to save some helpless sea turtles. Does this sound like someone who is going to cause her parents all sorts of premature grey hairs? If she were any nicer, she'd be too much for even the nerdy good kids! True, she refuses to go to Julliard, which has accepted her despite having never heard her play (yeah, THAT happens all the time!), but I'm betting a lot of parents wish they could have a kid like this instead of the one(s) they've got.

It doesn't help, either, that Cyrus, whom I actually think has talent as a singer (even if her choice of songs often leaves something to be desired), simply cannot act her way out of a paper bag. She seems to think the way to express rebelliousness is to keep a big from pasted across her face at all times and speak in a monotone snarl. When called upon to express anything like shock, surprise, sadness, etc. you can just see Cyrus attempting to ACT. That's "attempting" to act, by the way, not actually acting. However, she at least doesn't outshine any of her co-stars. The entire rest of the cast gives equally bland performances. From Kelly Preston (as her mom) I'm not that surprised, but Greg Kinnear (as her dad) has proven himself a real talent in the past. Maybe he just figured "Hey, it's a Nicholas Sparks movie, why bother?" And in spite of the fact that Cyrus' love interest is played by her real life boyfriend, there is absolutely no palpable connection between them whatsoever. I suppose you can see what they see in each other, though: "Hey, I've finally found someone as totally free of any discernible personality as I am!"

If you've seen any Sparks films in the past, or read any of his books (the latter of which I have not done)... then it's sort of like a city bus: you can see it coming from a long way off. You know what her boyfriend's secret will be, and that he'll have another one after that... you'll know dad has a secret or two as well, you'll know virtually every plot development long before it happens. But that seems to be what brings Sparks fans to his stories. They love to see things play out exactly the way they expect. I guess that's one of the main reasons "Dear John" didn't do quite as well at the box office as some of the others.

If you are a fan of movies like "A Walk To Remember", "Message In A Bottle" and the like, there's probably nothing I can do to change your mind about "The Last Song"... in fact, you probably stopped reading this a couple of paragraphs back. But if you value originality, believable characters, and something as simple and basic as a lead performer with the slightest ability to convince you they really are the character they're portraying, there's no real reason to see "The Last Song". Not even if you're in the Miley Cyrus demographic.

By the way, folks, if you hear about my mysterious disappearance shortly after this review is published, I would suggest that police investigate the local branch of the Miley Cyrus fan club.