Her range swings from pout to hissy fit. Her character, Ronnie, rebels against her father, her boyfriend, her piano, other teens, adults and the world in general. There are moments when you suspect, perhaps hope, that she's going to stamp her foot and walk off the movie altogether.
While it is fashionable to knock the kid in her first dramatic outing, it is doubtful that Meryl Streep could have made this character appealing.
In her transition from tween queen to dramatic actress, Cyrus, the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus and better known as the Disney Channel's "Hannah Montana," would be smart to keep her day job. While she removes her blond pop-star wig here in favor of a nose bauble and threadbare wardrobe, she has no plans to burn the hairpiece until after the TV show's finale in the spring of 2011.
The question here is whether fans who asked their parents to pay more than $100 for Hannah Montana concert tickets will also persuade them to pay to see this movie. The price may be properly adjusted, but even her most devoted fans may wish she would lighten up.
At its best, "Song" could be a movie about how an estranged daughter and her divorced father find a way to bond as they learn more about each other and life. There are a few such moments - primarily due to a thoughtful and quiet performance from Greg Kinnear, who plays the father as tolerant and particularly patient. Ronnie blames him for her parents' breakup and has retreated from friends and piano since the divorce, chalking up a police record for shoplifting in New York. She is not happy about being relegated to spending the summer with him.
Things change when she meets a boy on the beach. He's tall, handsome, nice, rich and seems, unbelievably, to be attracted to her pouts. He's played by the particularly photogenic Liam Hemsworth as a combination mechanic, aquarium volunteer and volleyball player. He keeps smiling, no matter what.
Since this is a movie based on the writings of Nicholas Sparks, one expects it to deal with love and tragedy and to walk a thin line between melodrama and sentiment. There is nothing wrong with sentiment, at the movies or elsewhere, and Sparks' movies have often been unfairly lambasted for showing signs of feeling. The best of Sparks' movies is good indeed, the memorable and underrated "The Notebook."
But "The Last Song" is more melodrama than sentiment with a half-dozen subplots that play as individual, often unrelated, incidents. It was written first as a screenplay for Cyrus and later novelized. Sparks should stick to novels and leave casting to others, although his leading lady is not the only problem here.
Kelly Preston has a bit part as the visiting mother but gives no information on what went wrong with the marriage. While Kinnear is quite good, 13-year-old Bobby Coleman contributes the best performance in the movie as the sensitive but mischievous kid brother who hopes against hope that the father and sister will make up and that he can have some semblance of a family again. He cries real tears even though they would be better utilized in another movie.
As Hannah Montana, Cyrus has shown that within the limits of music video she can move well, has chutzpah and some personality. Here, though, she seems stymied by anything deeper than sneering.
But she is only 17 and is likely to have other chances at avoiding the fates of Hilary Duff and the Olsen twins, who never successfully transitioned to movies. After watching the movie, Cyrus vowed to hire an acting coach. Smart girl.
0 comments:
Post a Comment