Hannah Montana: The Movie Review

A harmless and cheery musical adventure for ‘tweens who love both Miley Cyrus and her alter-ego, the rock star Hannah Montana. There are new songs, a cute boy and farm animals. For structural analysts, though, the movie raises other questions. For example, is a teenage singer playing a teenager playing a singer a post-modern commentary on fame, an indulgence in it, or just an excuse for a new album?

Starring: Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Taylor Swift

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

There are actually two movies in Hannah Montana: The Movie. The first is a musical adventure starring Miley Cyrus as a rock star who goes back to her native Tennessee, sings lots of songs, meets a cute boy and eventually kisses him -- although we don't see much of that because, like, yuck. The second is a post-modern analysis of identity as it pertains to celebrity, and of its psychic cost. It's totally, like, self-referential.

Hannah Montana No. 1 will probably satisfy its core audience, the ‘tween girls who regard the entire Hannah experience -- Miley Cyrus starring as Miley Stewart, a country girl whose alter ego is Hannah Montana, famous rock star -- in the way their parents thought about the Patty Duke show, in which an actress played both herself and her identical cousin: as an elaborate game of dress-up. Miley wears her great clothes (glitter in L.A., country casual in Tennessee), sings hummable pop tunes, and gets into various jams, mostly because she's just trying to be nice to everyone. She's helped out by her indulgent but wise father Billy Ray Cyrus, who is, of course, Miley's real-life father. In the Hannah Montana world, just like in a Charlie Kaufman movie, life imitates art imitates life.

This Hannah Montana is a lark: Miley has gone all Hollywood (the last straw is a fight in a shoe store with Tyra Banks over a pair of to-die-for high heels) and so dad takes her back home to Crowley Corners, Tenn., as part of what he calls Hannah detox. "You can't take Hannah away from me," cries Miley, a Dr. Jekyll longing for her Mr. Hyde, but eventually she learns about down-home values and puts on a big show to save the local meadow from the evil developer who wants to put up a giant mall ("Will there be a Bloomies?," asks Miley, letting her inner Hannah show through.)

There are also several new Miley Cyrus tunes, including a hip-hop-tinged hoedown number that has them all dancing in the barn. No one realizes that Miley is really Hannah because she takes off her wig and changes her outfit: in this respect, Miley is like Clark Kent, who fooled people for generations by removing his glasses and pulling down a lock of hair whenever he became Superman. There is also the matter of Travis (Lucas Till), the cute-as-a-button farmhand who never got over his Grade 1 crush over young Miley, but who isn't sure about Hannah.

The second Hannah Montana will be of more interest to students of Sigmund Freud, if not Swifty Lazar: when Miley becomes Hannah she also takes on an air of vacuity and entitlement, characteristics that are enabled by agents and fans because she is a famous singer. The villain in this story is the very idea of fame, represented by Oswald (Peter Gunn), a British tabloid reporter who skulks around trying to besmirch Hannah by revealing the dark secret that she's Miley Stewart from Tennessee. The only reason this could be a scandal is that a revelation of decency would undermine a musical career, but Miley is saved by the wisdom of the crowd: the climax of the film comes when they cheer for Miley to indulge her hidden identity.

The question for cultural analysts (and tabloid reporters) is how much of this mirrors the real life of Miley Cyrus. Is Hannah Montana: The Movie a commentary on the price of success or just an excuse for a new album? If fame is the villain, what does this mean for Miley, both the real one and the one she is playing? Or are they really that different? Hannah Montana: The Movie goes off the rails in its final half-hour in a long sequence where Miley has to keep two dates at once, changing clothes on the run: it's deadly as farce, but telling as commentary. The Hannah Montana fans out there will probably be dancing in the aisles, but Hannah Montana: The Movie is in a way a cautionary tale about answered prayers. Once they've cheered your inner Hannah, can you ever be Miley again?