Movie review: 'Hannah Montana: The Movie'

Miley Cyrus (Credit: Sam Emerson/Disney)

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2 stars (out of four)

“Hannah Montana The Movie” is a title that needs neither introduction nor punctuation. The film stars 16-year-old Miley Cyrus—16, but with the showbiz wiles and Brenda Vaccaro voice of a 40-year-old—in a big-screen stretchy-pants expansion of the Disney Channel TV series. The idea, in case you don’t have members of the H.M. fan club where you live, is that Ms. Cyrus splits herself in two and nearly goes mad trying to be both down-home Miley Stewart from Tennessee and, in disguise, Hannah Montana, L.A. rock star adored by millions, with only a dirty-blond wig to conceal her identity. Fame is a bear! It’s hard!

And in this film, fame is not very funny! Millions of kids will disagree, and that’s OK. This is their film, not mine. But they deserve better. I’m not saying this character’s a lousy role model, but it’s too bad the film isn’t more interested in ... well, things other than Miley catfighting with Tyra Banks over a pair of shoes, or coping with her publicist, played by Vanessa Williams, or negotiating the demands of family and fans with the help of her dad, Robby Ray (Billy Ray Cyrus, the Robert Cummings of country). Early on, her sometime-Vanity Fair-photo-shoot partner calls her “baby doll,” which is troubling for anyone who has seen Elia Kazan’s “Baby Doll” lately.

Miley/Hannah must save her hometown of Crowley Corners, Tenn., from a developer (Barry Bostwick) who wants to build a mall and ruin the scenery. (Maybe Miley and the gang will take on Wal-Mart in a sequel.) This, at least, requires the pop phenom with the double life to use her song stylings for a community fundraiser instead of the usual career advancement.

We all want to be rock stars, I guess. As a preteen I entertained vague desires either to be Groucho Marx or Dean Jones (twitchy though he was) or Duke Ellington or Dan Rowan or Dick Martin. “Hannah Montana The Movie” asserts that we can have it all: the drug of fame and the respite of normal life—at one point, Dad refers to putting his pop star daughter on “Hannah Montana detox”—as long as the fan base maintains its love.

The picture was directed by Peter Chelsom, who did “Funny Bones,” though he did not bring much of the funny from that project to bear on this project, scripted by Dan Berendsen. The movie’s only mission is to further a brand, and it exists specifically to prop up its song list, which includes the latest dance craze, “Hoedown Throwdown,” in which Miley exhorts us to pop it, lock it and, to the best of our abilities, “polka-dot it.” Miley was on “Leno” the other night, trying to teach him that one.

Cyrus certainly is something; there’s talent there, though her steely, bleached-teeth glare of determination obscures it. The movie packages both sides of the personality coin. Can this paragon of fabulousness reconnect with her roots and keep it real, while keeping the British tabloid snoop (Peter Gunn) off her tail? Can Miley sense a spark between herself and her old school chum, Travis, played by likable Lucas Till? I believe she can. In fact she’ll sing a song about him, inspired by his favorite axiom: “Life’s a climb.”

I like the end-credits sequence best, which has nothing to do with hoary complications or the miseries of stardom or the magical spellbinding powers of a cheap wig. It has everything to do with learning—in case you came in late—the Hoedown Throwdown.

mjphillips@tribune.com

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