This film fails at every level and in particular as a vehicle to launch Miley Cyrus’s acting career. Screen-wise she has little to offer and the story never rises above bad melodrama. There’s not an original moment and certainly no message, but as everyone keeps saying “we all make mistakes”, presumably it’s the filmmaker’s intent that we give credence to that profound thought. Yes. Quite.
Ronnie (Miley Cyrus) and her younger brother (Bobby Coleman) are spending the summer with their estranged father (Greg Kineer). Ronnie is still angry about her parent’s divorce and gives everyone a hard time, in particular her father. She wanders into the local teenage scene, catches the eye of Will (Liam Hemsworth) and a romance begins.
What’s supposed to happen in films is that a storyline carries the characters on a journey, by the end of which they should have learned something that has made them change. In this story, Ronnie is an absolute pain, but the moment her boyfriend kisses her she becomes happy, chatty and a pleasure to be around. Unfortunately, this is only half way through so, with her journey over, where are we going to go for the next 45 minutes? The answer is, absolutely nowhere.
As a movie going experience, this film doesn’t have much to offer in the beginning, with everyone and every situation being one cliche after another, but after Ronnie’s ‘awakening’ things get even more mind numbing. The second and new storyline about Ronnie’s father includes a painfully contrived connection to Ronnie’s boyfriend, clearly put there so the two young lovers can have a fight and then get back together. Note to all writers – please stop throwing in dead siblings; no one cares about someone they don’t know. Duh.
Finally, we come to the title. At the beginning of the film, Ronnie has stopped playing the piano, but after she has a strum at her boyfriend’s house (who conveniently has a piano in his living room) the story carries on as if this is still a huge obstacle she has to overcome. Needless to say, there’s an unbelievably cheesy ending with Miss Cyrus playing the you-know-what which is, of course, her Last Song. If only someone had got her to sign a contract to that effect prior to her recital, sitting through this load of dross might just have been worth it.
