Going to the movie theater and purchasing tickets to a Nicholas Sparks adaptation is akin to reserving a table at a fancy restaurant so you can order oatmeal. You know exactly what's coming before it arrives. The flavorless dish ends up being lukewarm, at best. And once it's finished, you immediately question why you mustered up the energy to consume something so substandard.
The Last Song will be remembered -- if it's remembered at all -- as the film that launched pop icon Miley Cyrus's bid for acting credibility. And while her performance in the film is a good first step in the right direction, the 17-year-old still has miles to go before she'll attain her professional goals (and plenty of time in which to reach them).
Best known as both halves of the Hannah Montana equation, Cyrus strips away her Disney princess accoutrements to play Ronnie, a prototypical teenage bad seed shipped with her precocious younger brother (Bobby Coleman) from Manhattan to Georgia to spend the summer with their estranged father (Greg Kinnear). Ronnie sulks and mopes until she meets Will (Liam Hemsworth), a hunky local from the right side of the tracks who romances our heroine despite protests from his well-to-do family and snooty friends. As the two jump through routine Romeo & Juliet hoops, we play a rousing game of "Guess Which Character Is Terminally Ill." This is a Nicholas Sparks adaptation, after all, and the title Last Song all but gives the secret away.
Still, Last Song director Julie Anne Robinson knows her core audience -- diehard Cyrus fans and the parents watching their daughters emulate her -- and plays directly to them. Kinnear is his usual dependable self, shifting from parental dismay to comforting support with ease. Hemsworth has a healthy sense of humor to back up his good looks. Coleman, meanwhile, gives that annoying brat from The Blind Side a run for his money. (In my own personal hell, those two child actors are cast in a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid remake.)
But the men in the movie are window dressing for Robinson's teen queen star, who creates enough distance between her impossibly popular blonde alter-ego and Ronnie so that her Last Song character doesn't have to contend with Hannah Montana's shadow. Cyrus hasn't exactly matured, but she's on the path to growing up. She gets a dress-shopping montage. She receives one of those life-altering kisses where the camera spins around her on a sweeping axis. And she even gets to mutter "bitch" under her breath when a jealous townie crosses her path. Take that, Mickey Mouse.
