“Hannah Montana” Movie: When Critic-Proof Flicks Get Reviewed Anyway
Our look at the closing lines of the week’s biggest new-music reviews takes a trip to the theater to round up reactions to Hannah Montana: The Movie, which lands in theatres today. One critic who was so traumatized by the movie, she devolved into text-speak!
• “Chipmunk-cheeked ‘tween sensation Cyrus, like the film she anchors, is enthusiastic, unpretentious, and aggressively inoffensive, as are the blandly upbeat songs she warbles. Town & Country director Peter Chelsom isn’t making a movie so much as delivering product and protecting a lucrative Disney brand. On that level, he succeeds. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant, as the only folks Montana is interested in pleasing are prepubescent girls and Disney stockholders.” [Nathan Rabin, AV Club]
• “To its credit, Hannah acknowledges its own internal conflict: The tension between Hannah and Miley parallels the conflict between the maturing Miley Cyrus and her TV persona, a child who will no doubt be recycled by Disney Channel till the end of time. The film is also generous in giving a significant scene to Taylor Swift, who as a singer-songwriter can blow Hannah’s doors off. It may be a way of saying, ‘Your moment, my movie,’ but it shows the confidence of a mature, or perhaps maturing, talent.” [John Anderson, Newsday]
• “I’m not sure which one of her dads Miley Cyrus most trusts for advice, but whichever Ray most has a foot in reality, I hope they sit their teenage daughter down and tell her two stories about two singers. One is about another blonde from a neighboring Southern state, a girl who kept her own name and all the fame that came with it and was last seen buying Cheetos barefoot in a 7-Eleven. The other is about a country superstar who thought his fortunes would improve if he split himself into two. His alter ego, Chris Gaines, brought down both careers. Fairytale success rarely ends well. Let’s hope between all her schizophrenic lives, at least one offers a chance of stability.” [Amy Nicholson, BoxOffice.com]
• “i love hannah sooo much. she’s so CLEAN, you know?” [Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times]
Hannah Montana: The Movie [Rotten Tomatoes]
