The Last Song: Critic Reviews

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.

The "last song"? In all conscience, that should really have been Billy Ray's Achy Breaky Heart in a brooding minor key. You'll feel the ache and hear the break.

All the obvious elements combine to manipulate the audience into a weepy time at the movies -- again.

Cyrus is game and appealing, but she's not nearly enough of a natural actress to pull off the emotional whip-cracks the story puts Ronnie through.

The director, Julie Anne Robinson, makes sure that any scene that might culminate in thought or reflection instead becomes a montage set to music.

It's hard to believe this bland starlet is the same spunky kid who bounced through the Hannah Montana movie just last year, but it's only fair to cut Cyrus some slack.

The movie moves Ms. Cyrus from where she was to more or less where she and her handlers wanted to be, and Mr. Kinnear's musician father, Steve, adds a generous measure of grace.

It's like Dante and Beatrice all over again, with the Georgia coast standing in for Paradise.

I like Miley Cyrus. I like her in spite of the fact that she's been packaged within an inch of her life.

Sand dunes at sunset, summer lovin' (had me a blast!), a third-act medical crisis and a clutch of letters designed to be read aloud in voice-over: Another month, another adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks romance.

Years on the Hannah Montana TV series have not adequately prepared Miley Cyrus for screen acting, even in a vehicle as unchallenging as this adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel.

Robinson is a sympathetic director of actors, allowing almost everyone their dignity. For the most part, she keeps this emotionally charged story in the schmaltz-free zone.

[Cyrus is] believable as Ronnie partly because she, too, is 17 and at a crossroads in her life.

Cyrus, alas, hasn't yet learned not to act with her eyebrows and overbite. But she does show off her considerable chops as a pianist and remains reasonably likable throughout.

It's the worst of both worlds as Disney cash cow Miley Cyrus makes the most dubious "dramatic" debut of any singer since Britney Spears.

It's not a great film, with some edge Sparks put in the novel left out of the script. But there's real chemistry between the young lovers.

Sadly, without a single note of originality, Last Song is an awfully long and tiresome tune.

Perhaps feel-good tragedy doesn't quite capture it; feel-good sadism might be more like it.

The predictable plot mechanics aren't what make it insufferable. The big problem is Miley Cyrus.

A dramatic showcase for a more grown-up Miley Cyrus, but not much more.

Kinnear lends the movie a dignity it doesn't deserve and stands as the only cast member whose dramatic moments aren't propped up by soaring musical cues.

So bad it makes The Notebook look like Casablanca.

For those wondering if the continuing popularity of such exercises might make this one worth the ticket price, the same effect might be achieved by writing names and obstacles (make some tragic) on index cards and tossing them in the air.