Day 18 -- The Last Song

Released: March 31, 2010

Starring: Miley Cyrus, Greg Kinnear, Liam Hemsworth,

Writer/Director: Nickolas Sparks and Jeff Van Wie/Julie Anne Robinson

Description: A drama centered on a rebellious girl who is sent to a Southern beach town for the summer to stay with her father. Through their mutual love of music, the estranged duo learn to reconnect.

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]

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There's this weird curiosity I have with seeing stars of Disney Channel and Nickelodeon in movies that are outside of their most famous roles. It not really limited to those two channels, but more so, child actors that get crammed down our throats. I want to see if there's some semblance of talent, or if they just get by on their looks, personality and/or gimmick. 

There are always good examples, Josh Peck (of Drake and Josh) in "The Wackness",  and bad examples, Raven-Symone in just about anything, of this test. In "The Last Song", Miley Cyrus toes the line between good and bad. She does about as good as she can with a Nickolas Sparks story -- Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams are the exception to the rule. She has her moments with Kinnear, but everything with  Liam Hemsworth is forced and a little Hanna Montana-ish.

The story is your typically young adult novel stuff. Rebellious girl, Ronnie (Cyrus) is sent to live with her father, Steve (Greg Kinnear), for the summer against her will. She fall in love with the beautiful rich guy, William (Hemsworth), and through that love, she reconciles with her father, and the two bond again over Ronnie's musically talent. But unbeknownst to her, he is dying of cancer. You know, that old story.

By far the best performance is Kinnear, who seriously need to get more dramatic lead roles. He played the part with ease and grace that I was actually upset when he neared death, and eventually succumbed to the disease. 

It's like a theory I have, good comedic actors can kill in dramatic roles, but dramatic actors fail miserably in comedic roles. Kinnear is a lesser known talent, but is on the same level of a Jim Carrey. The best example of this theory is Tom Hanks.

This movie, as with most Nickolas Sparks stories, has a good narrative in it, but the execution is so melodramatic that we lose the actual heart of the story, or it comes too late into the film. Many could theorize that leaving the emotional scenes between Cyrus and Kinnear to the end of the film validates the rest of the movie, but I believe they focused too much on the love story and not enough on the real drama of the story. 

It was probably because they were appealing to a younger, more Cyrus-centric fan base than a normal audience. The movie had a chance to be a pretty good drama, if it knew the right things to focus on.

Rating: 6/10 -- Little too melodramatic for me (I know, I know), but still a solid movie which never really made me roll my eyes. Cyrus shows potential, but still needs to be willing to shed her Disney image on-screen (God knows she does it in music) to become successful.