If you’ve seen one Nicolas Sparks movie, I’d venture to say you’ve seen them all. The man, who writes all of his adapted books turned movies’ screenplays, struck gold with The Notebook but hasn’t really felt the same success since. With Nights In Rodanthe, Dear John, and The Last Song all being adapted from his books in the past two years, you would think he might enjoy some of the success he felt from The Notebook, but alas, he hasn’t.
The Last Song, directed Julie Anne Robinson (who is mainly a television show director) as her first major studio movie, tries its hardest to tug on your heart strings but ultimately is underdone by the films horrible acting. The movie stars Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana fame) as Ronnie Miller, an edgy teenager with a rebellious attitude and not much else. It’s learned early on in the movie that Ronnie is a great musician, an experienced piano player who was accepted to Julliard (without an audition!) but has no ambition to attend the arts college due to no longer playing. Ronnie’s mother takes her and brother, Jonah (Bobby Coleman), to stay with their dad (played by Greg Kinnear) at the beach. Ronnie has a vendetta against her father for leaving her and her brother when their parents split up, thus the reason why she doesn’t play the piano anymore (he taught her how). Ronnie meets the local pretty boy (Liam Hemsworth) who goes gaga over Ronnie and her uber attractive personality. Not to mention that Miley Cyrus has this whole “retainer-sounding” lisp the entire movie. Ronnie and Hemsworth’s character, Will, spend the entire summer chasing each other and acting romantically stupid/challenged. The plot “twist” (if you want to call it that) comes about three-fourths of the way through the movie, so I won’t “spoil” it for you, but you should be able to guess what it entails since this is a Nicolas Sparks movie.
I don’t know who Miley Cyrus thinks she is fooling, but she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. She may be able to trick those pre-teen girls and those pre-pubescent boys who watch her television show on the Disney channel, but she’s atrocious here in The Last Song. As a matter of fact, the best actor in the entire movie is Bobby Coleman who plays Cyrus’ little brother. He’s given the film’s majority of emotional scenes and pretty much nails them. Greg Kinnear is always “good” in his roles, but he’s never “great” and he never takes this movie over in which he’s, by far, the most seasoned actor here. Kelly Preston makes a couple of appearances as Ronnie and Jonah’s mother, but it’s pretty much a glorified cameo.
The movie is full of good writing it suffers however because of the horrible acting and the unbelievable emotions of Ronnie, which is mainly Cyrus’ fault. Her character is supposed to undergo this great transformation midway through the movie but we never see it, instead Cyrus just changes the way she acts towards everyone without really showing us why. I mean, we know why she’s supposed to change, but she never shows us. The ending feels rushed and makes me think the director got tired of dealing with Cyrus’ terrible acting and just called it a day.
If you’re looking for romantic drama, The Last Song just might be cheesy enough for you to sit through it with your date or significant other without laughing. But by the end of the movie you’ll be thinking “why didn’t I just watch a Lifetime movie instead?”