Friday, April 2, 2010

Bizarro World Movie Reviews -- The Last Song

I think what I'm feeling now must be similar to the way people must have felt in the early 1960s when they witnessed a young lady named Barbra Streisand enter the world of cinema by storm, taking no prisoners and winning a fanbase that survives to this day. Or perhaps I am like someone sitting in the dark of a movie theater in 1978 who is witnessing the first star making role of a remarkable new actress named Meryl Streep. All I know is this: when you see The Last Song, you are not just watching a film that stands as one of the finest presentations of the human condition ever made but you are also seeing the true rise of a star who will dominate the world of cinema for the next generation and beyond. That person is Miley Cyrus.

Miley's performance in The Last Song is a finer acting job than I ever thought was possible not just from such a young girl but from anyone. It's amazing to me that she's only 17 because this means she will improve on her already vast ability to entertain and show us that a potential that already seems realized has in fact only just been tapped.

Miley plays Ronnie Miller, a girl from a broken home whose mother has sent her from New York to spend the summer with her father in Savannah, Georgia. Ronnie's dad, played by Greg Kinnear, is a classical composer whose hobby is restoring stained glass windows and I'm sure that, upon reading that, everyone out there could instantly relate and think, "Wow, this is so much like my own dad." Ronnie's story is like what The Odyssey would have been had it been a modern teen romance tale. Her hero's journey is one of triumph and tragedy that lesser minds see as contrived melodrama. It is only those who see beyond their own lives and look upon the world as a global village that can see how transcendent and universal themes that touch all our lives have only been truly and fully realized for the first time in this movie.

I struggled for a while if it was Miley Cyrus make The Last Song good or if it was the other way around? I wasn't able to answer that question until I thought, "What would Miley say?" and that was when I realized that I was asking the wrong question and that was how I was able to solve the problem. Miley Cyrus and The Last Song could not have been made without each other. Since the dawn of existence itself she was destined to be in this movie and it was destined to have her star in it. No, the proper question to ask is, "How does The Last Song and its young star elevate us as a species?" That question will not be fully answered for decades but I think we may already have begun the next age of mankind, an age in which we are all like teenage girls who hate their musician/glass repairing dads but come to understand them. if we all adopted that worldview, hate and anger against our fellow humans would ceases and prejudice and oppression would become distant legends told as fairy tales by future generations.

The Last Song also has some new Miley Cyrus songs. They're okay, I guess.

1 comment:

paulineh said...

Just loved your review!!