Most movie reviews start with a brief synopsis of the plot. One of the problems with “The Last Song” is that there are so many subplots going on, it’s nearly impossible to try and describe any of it in a brief fashion.
Technically, the film is about a young rebellious girl named Ronnie Miller (Miley Cyrus) who, along with her little brother (Bobby Coleman), gets shipped off to Georgia to spend the summer with her estranged father (Greg Kinnear). Ronnie’s parents went through a nasty divorce when she was very young and she has not had much contact with her father since then.
Alas, as with any Nicholas Sparks movie, there is an overabundance of stereotypical teenaged love. Ronnie meets a young man (Liam Hemsworth) at the beach one day who immediately falls for her. Whether it’s because of her obviously attractive surly attitude or her constant pouting, the boy is completely smitten. She, on the other hand, being the supposedly atypical female that she is, doesn’t fall for him until the third or fourth time she meets him again.
Sparks is now at a point in his career where every new movie seems to be a compilation of all the other Sparks movies that have come before. This seemingly random mix of various elements causes “The Last Song” to feel disjointed and out of sync. All the main elements of his other films are present in this movie but they never come together in a new way. A young girl loves a boy but his family hates the girl as they are in different social classes-it’s “The Notebook” but with the roles reversed. A great tragedy/revelation occurs, causing the couple to fight to prove their love-this is just like the issue of war in “Dear John” or Alzheimer’s in The Notebook.” A main character dies-this happens in every single Nicholas Sparks story.
The worst part of this movie is that despite the aforementioned issues, it has the potential to actually be good. But then Cyrus opens her mouth and starts to try to act and it’s completely downhill from there. She is truly terrible.
Part of the drama in a movie that viewers appreciate comes from caring about or at least understanding the protagonist. Most people want the main character to win. The problem with “The Last Song” is that nobody is rooting for Cyrus. She is annoying from her first line on and she has absolutely no range as an actress. It would not be surprising if halfway through the movie, she suddenly confesses that she is indeed Hannah Montana.
The one saving grace in this movie was the young actor Bobby Coleman. At the end of the film, near the point where Sparks always decides to pull at heartstrings by killing off a character, Coleman shines. He is not overindulgent in his display of emotion. His reactions are heartbreaking and his tears seem to come from a place Cyrus has never even read about. Kinnear is also in good form and his interactions with Coleman are truly believable. These two actors are the only reason to see this movie.
Despite some strong supporting actors in the movie, Sparks makes his usual misstep of attempting to pander to emotional teenagers by putting a lot of sappy scenes and overdone dialog in the screenplay. “The Last Song” becomes yet another sad victim to the ego of Sparks and his belief that he can write good love stories.
“I write a dramatic epic love story, I write modern-day Greek tragedies, and there’s a big difference between that and romance,” Sparks said in 2008. “You have romance novels, and then you have what I do, more along the lines of love stories like Eric Segal’s ‘Love Story’ or ‘The Bridges of Madison County.’ But you can even go all the way back. You had Hemingway write ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ the movies of the forties-‘Casablanca,’ ‘From Here to Eternity’-Shakespeare, and that’s the genre I work in.”
Clearly, Sparks doesn’t realize his innate talent for making others laugh hysterically. Next time, perhaps he should try his hand at writing a comedy.
