Review: The Last Song

I'm probably a bigger fan of Nicholas Sparks film adaptations than most dudes, but even I have to admit that his stuff all feels pretty much the same. You can pretty much count on two bright faced, too beautiful kids who fall in love quickly. You can pretty much count on them being from two totally different social classes. There'll be a misunderstanding that'll get blown wildly out of proportion. Oh, and somebody's gonna kick the bucket just at the most emotionally manipulative moment. Despite being basically paint-by-numbers dramas, Sparks' stories all fill a certain niche that doesn't really get explored anymore, in favor of bland romantic comedies.

However, The Last Song is a whole different bed of roses. It's basically a vehicle created to highlight the star power of teeny bopper sensation, Miley Cyrus, making her first real jump into the big leagues outside of Hannah Montana. As such, they've selected a Sparks story that seems tailor made for her. Here she plays Ronnie, a moody and temperamental girl seething with inner rage since her parents' divorce. She's been sent to the lovely beach side home of her father, Steve(Greg Kinnear), along with her little brother while mom(the barely present Kelly Preston) prepares to marry some other dude. Steve is perhaps a bit too earnest, over eager to please and repair the broken relationship with his daughter. Ronnie, though, ain't havin' it. When she's not ignoring him, she's belittling him. In fact she's a bit of a skank biscuit to everyone she meets. Why, all she needs is that perfect guy to break through her hard emotional shell.

She finds that shining knight of a Ken doll in Will, a guy so improbably perfect that it's almost like he was created to play the male lead in a melodramatic teen romance. A volleyball playin', animal defendin', aquarium workin', truck drivin' sonuva gun who laughs at his own jokes. Frankly he's a little bit creepy with his soul piercing blue eyes.  But he melts Ronnie's heart, and of course finding a little bit of love makes her less of a harpy to everybody else.

I could count the number of Miley Cyrus songs I'd recognize on...hmmm, zero fingers. I'm not exactly the demographic she's aiming for, and I've never seen her act outside of her minor role in Tim Burton's Big Fish. Now that she's pretty much an adult, and clearly looking to make that leap into adult roles, it seems like her voice is about twenty years ahead of her. She sounds like she's been smokin' road flares. Normally I dig the whole raspy voice thing, but it doesn't work with her. She's too cutesy for it, and it definitely doesn't fit with this soft material.  As for her acting, let's just say it's a good thing she's got a successful music career to fall back on. She's hardly alone. The bulk of the film's cast act as if they were ripped straight from some high school production. Only Greg Kinnear adds any solid depth. It comes at a price, though. The gap between he and Cyrus is so large that it only highlights her deficiencies. She's much more watchable when she's only being out acted by a bunch of baby sea turtles rather than other human beings.

You go into any Sparks story expecting his usual bag of tricks, but The Last Song fits uncomfortably somewhere between teen schmaltz and adult flight of fancy. It does neither well. It lacks the maturity of Sparks' Nights in Rodanthe and the unbridled passion of The Notebook.

I'm not sure even the Cyrus fan club could get into it. Sitting behind me at the theater were three girls, couldn't have been aged more than 13 any of them. They blabbed the entire time, and since I already felt creepy enough being the only old dude at The Last Song, I didn't want to draw attention to myself by telling them to shut up. So I just listened. Were they jabbering about the movie's twists and turns and developments? No. They went on about Miley Cyrus's hair. In every single scene. Oh, and about how cute sea turtles are. 

They are pretty cute, aren't they?