One major problem with “The Last Song” is that it can’t manage to sort through its various issues in any dramatically compelling way, instead falling into a slack, soap-opera rhythm in which potentially catastrophic developments seem to have no lasting emotional effects.Īnother big problem is Ms. Will, by the way, is also a mechanic, a volunteer at the local aquarium and a young man whose family has issues of its own. Hemsworth, a star graduate of the Taylor Lautner Academy of Shirtless Emoting. In addition to the terminal illness (signaled by a telltale cough around the movie’s midpoint), there is a church fire that Ronnie’s dad is believed to have started, a wayward friend with a bad boyfriend, another friend with a dead brother, a nest of sea turtle eggs menaced by a raccoon, and a romance did I mention it was star-crossed? with a hunky beach volleyball player named Will. So much more trouble ensues that “The Last Song,” if not for its sluggish pacing and soft lighting, might turn into farce.
Ronnie, a piano prodigy since childhood, has abandoned her and her father’s dreams of Juilliard, and she’s had some trouble with the law. Dad (Greg Kinnear) and mom (Kelly Preston) are divorced, leaving Ronnie and her younger brother, Jonah (Bobby Coleman), in some distress. Cyrus’s character, a recent high school graduate named Ronnie, arrives at her father’s beautifully run-down beach house on the Georgia coast carrying quite a bit of baggage. Not that it is easy to strike the proper emotional tone in a movie that is as stuffed with bogus feeling and overwrought incident as a fast-food burrito. Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth, who in spite of being a real-life item are just not up to the task. In that film Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum play the star-crossed young lovers, whereas in “The Last Song” the duty falls on Ms. “Dear John,” directed by Lasse Hallstrom, is superior because there is less of everything, and also because the cast has more talent. The movies share tried-and-true elements of the Sparks formula: star-crossed love with a hint of class disparity (but no nonwhite characters of any consequence) terminal illness late-breaking revelations and plot twists. We have already had two this year “Dear John” and this one and a comparison is instructive, if also exhausting. And we will also have many more films based on the work of Nicholas Sparks. But it is likely that we can look forward to more movies starring Miley Cyrus, the teenage chanteuse attempting some serious acting in this beachy melodrama.
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