The Last Song (Blu-ray Combo Pack)
Directed by Julie Anne Robinson
Studio: Touchstone
Year: 2010
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 107 minutes
Rating: PG
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English; Dolby Digital 5.1 French
Subtitles: SDH, Spanish, French
Region: A
MSRP: $39.99
Release Date: August 17, 2010
Review Date: August 8, 2010
The Film
2.5/5
Julie Anne Robinson’s The Last Song plops television singing star Miley Cyrus into a mediocre teenage melodrama of no great distinction. The film is achingly predictable and routinely assembled with some A-list stars to support Miley in her first movie role acting without the benefit of falling back on her singing. She’s all right, but there isn’t one original moment in the overlong 107 minutes, and when the screenwriters and director work overtime trying to yank tears from our eyes with a third act death and memorial service, well, you know you’re not dealing with A-list material despite the best efforts of the producers to do right by their star.
Siblings Ronnie (Miley Cyrus) and Jonah Miller (Bobby Coleman) leave their New York home and come to stay the summer with their dad (Greg Kinnear) at a Georgia beach. She’s a piano prodigy, but her father’s divorce from mom Kim (Kelly Preston) has left Ronnie embittered and uncommunicative. She’s abandoned the piano and refused to accept the scholarship she’s won to Julliard in the fall. Over the summer, she meets poor little rich boy Will Blakelee (Liam Hemsworth) and falls in love. But the summer is filled with ups and downs for Ronnie: an arrest for shoplifting for which she was punked by a girl she thought was her friend (Carly Chaikin), some upsetting news about a family health issue, and Will’s disapproving parents are balanced by improved relations with her dad, a grand adventure with protecting sea turtle eggs so they can hatch, and Ronnie’s finally sitting down to the piano again.
While produced with class and expense, it’s clear that money wasn’t funneled into the writers’ room for a screenplay with some originality (Nicholas Sparks and Jeff Van Wie are credited, based on Sparks’ novel). The movie continually seesaws between scenes of joy and scenes of sorrow never allowing its tween audience to get complacent with any extreme emotion for too long. Casting hasn’t been felicitous either, even though the actors are fine. But why does Ronnie have the only Southern accent between her two parents and younger brother, and why do the siblings resemble neither of their parents at all? The film really begins to seem like a prepackaged, homogenized entertainment for the star’s millions of fans who aren’t expected to think too hard about what’s before them: better to just let the mawkish emotional highs (Miley and Liam deliriously in love, swimming together in scuba gear in the local aquarium’s huge fish tank) and lows (there are so many) allow the preteens to squeal with delight or dissolve into tears. Director Julie Anne Robinson hasn’t lent anything special to the proceedings filming the show in mundane fashion (though that fish tank odyssey is the film’s high point photographically). With such an arresting location (the movie was filmed in Tybee Island, Georgia), the film should have been bursting with pictorial splendor, but it isn’t.
Miley Cyrus gives her first dramatic role the old college try, but at this stage of the game, she’s just not interesting enough as an actress to earn unstinting praise. She can cry on cue and run through a bag of emotions, but they seem on the surface and not dredged up from deep within. Greg Kinnear gives a quiet and effectively controlled performance as the father coping with more conflicts than one man should have to bear. Little Bobby Coleman is most effective as the plucky little brother who matures noticeably as the film progresses. As the love interest, Liam Hemsworth goes shirtless a lot to display his best preparation for the role he’s saddled with. Nick Lashaway as a nasty drug dealer and Carly Chaikin as the girl he routinely beats up give predictably one dimensional performances to match the simplicity of the characters as written.
Video Quality
4/5
The film’s 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio is delivered in a 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. Color is nicely saturated throughout the film, and flesh tones are accurate and seem appropriately tan for the beach setting of the movie. Sharpness is adequate, but the image doesn’t pop perhaps due to only slightly above average black levels. With the film being so recent, it goes without saying that the image is clean and artifact free. The film has been divided into 16 chapters.
Audio Quality
3.5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix is a bit of a disappointment. With its ocean setting and activities such as beach volleyball contests to occupy large chunks of the story, the soundtrack as presented is very mediocre with very little use of the rear channels for the ambient sounds of the various locations. True, the pop music standards which adorn the soundtrack are often directed into the fronts and rears for a small sense of immersion, but those are the only times the rears seem to see much action, and the LFE channel is used even less often. Dialogue is nicely recorded and placed properly into the center channel.
Special Features
3/5
The audio commentary is by director Julie Robinson and co-producer Jennifer Gibgot. The two friends chat amiably about the project, offering nothing exciting or unusual about the experience of the production resulting in a predictable if genial track.
All of the bonus features are presented in 1080p.
There is an alternate opening sequence for the movie (involving a church fire which is one of the picture’s major plot point downers) which can be played with or without director commentary. It runs for 3 minutes.
There are five deleted scenes which may be played individually or in one 7 ¼-minute grouping. Some are extensions of scenes which are in the movie. There is also commentary with these which may be turned on or off.
Actor Bobby Coleman takes the viewer on a tour of the set visiting with co-producer Adam Shankman, Miley’s security guard (Miley pops in to say hello for a second), and the make-up, hair, craft service, and grips.
“The Making of the Music Video ‘When I look at You’” finds co-producer Adam Shankman directing the music video of Miley’s only song in the movie (sung over the closing credits). He and production designer Nelson Coates discuss the seat-of-their-pants quality of throwing together the music video for Miley with some behind-the-scenes shots of the different set-ups for the song. It runs 4 ½ minutes.
Miley’s music video “When I Look at You” is presented in a 4 ¼-minute featurette.
There are 1080p trailers for Lost: The Final Season, Secretariat, When in Rome, Oceans, Prince of Persia, and the animated A Christmas Carol.
The second disc in the package is the DVD copy of the movie.
In Conclusion
2.5/5 (not an average)
Despite an honest effort at making a teen drama, The Last Song is mawkish and mediocre. Fans of the teenaged star may find it just what they’re looking for, but on just about every level, the result is undistinguished and predictable.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
