THE LAST SONG (PG): On General Release Friday 30th April
If you think Hollywood doesn’t have a responsibility to our youth then you’re wrong. In a world where televisions are more effective parents than, well, parents – the lurid, 2D starlets that adorn the cinema screen ought to fit some kind of respectable mould for our doomed Paris Hilton wannabe brats.
Miley Cyrus is one of the most famous stars in America and reaches out to millions of confused teenagers the world over. If you’re 14 and love boys and shopping, you’re going to listen to this pixellated, perfectly airbrushed encapsulation of everything you perceive to be good in the world over your tired, boring mother whose interests include arguing with your father and asking you to do meaningless tasks.
If Last Song is some form of template with which Miley Cyrus is asking her audience to measure their lives, then everything’s messed. The script tries to crowbar in messages of selflessness and earthy morals, but the irony of this when measured with millionaire Miley is absurd. Furthermore, there are absolutely no redeeming characters in Last Song’s fake world of exaggerated emotions, and twee ups and downs. Her brother is the most annoying blob of youth I have ever encountered and her father is a sickeningly perfect drawing of a caring American dad. Oh look, he makes stain glass windows and plays the piano! Come to the north of England Miley, go to Salford and see what dads are really like.
Clearly, Miley Cyrus’ films are designed as some horribly thought-out advert for her disgustingly shallow career. For this reason I’m bemused as to why teenagers relate to her. In this movie she’s a confused selfish brat who creates for herself a clichéd Maroon 5 authored love scenario whilst being vile to her father. No wonder teenagers turn into nightmarish brats – it’s Miley Cyrus’s fault. It’s all her fault.
At the point of the fourth mind-numbingly obvious sunny-day-everything’s-ok-we’re-all-in-love plot twist, I was trying to restrain myself from leaving. Life isn’t like this. Little surprise the vast majority of young girls cast wild projections of some imagined future of false hopes and lost dreams. It’s this film – packed full of every teen cliché imagined, in teeth-whitened HD.
I just wanted the blonde-haired jock turned nice guy Miley’s character was pathetically falling in love with to give her an STD or something. Or maybe the restaurant she works for back home to ring and say she needs to be in on Monday because she needs to clean the men’s bog.
What’s more, the musical element of the film is nothing more than a desperate afterthought. The idea that music unites her and her cancer-ridden father, the only tool through which they can speak, is lost in a shiny, bikini clad, shaped eyebrow, six pack maze of Miley’s utterly unrealistic and narcissistic clamouring.
Watch Last Song if you feel like being compelled to smash things up with a plug flex, but just make sure you don’t show this film to impressionable teen girls. It’s ruinous bile for an increasingly hysterical generation.
