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Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009)
Daniel's Review
This may shock people, I have seen nearly every episode of ‘Hannah Montana’ as I grew up watching the program when it premiered on the Disney Channel, back in 2006, and became a powerful brand and franchise, alongside ‘High School Musical’ and ‘Camp Rock’. When ‘Hannah Montana: The Movie’ premiered in theatres back in 2009, I was excited, but the result was a massive disappointment.
If you’ve seen the show, then you know that Miley Stewart lives a double life as teen popstar sensation Hannah Montana. The film is about Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) as she gets in a shoe fight with Tyra Banks as Hannah Montana, which leaves her father to trick her daughter in going back home to Tennessee, restricting Miley to become Hannah Montana for two weeks as she finds her identity back home, and find out what she’s been missing since living the sweet life.
There are a few positives with this movie, some of the acting performances are serviceable from Miley Cyrus and Jason Earles, with the strongest acting going to Emily Osment as Miley’s BFF Lilly Truscott and Margo Martindale as Miley’s grandmother.
The songs are quite catchy and fun to listen too with “Hoedown Throwdown”, “Butterfly Fly Away” and “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home”, with my personal favourite being “The Climb” which is such an inspirational song and has a great message of climbing through life and living your dreams.
There’s even some brilliant scenes lost in the shuffle, including the rotating door scene between Miley, Travis and the little girl and the opening drama between Miley and Lilly. However, even the drama introduced in the film is short-lived and rushed through just to have a resolution to get to the next scene, and the film comes off a bit too silly, and sitcom-y, and while it worked for a television show, doesn’t mean it works as a feature film. Although, there are times when it does actually work; look no further then to ‘The Lizzie McGuire Movie’; another Disney Channel series turned feature film.
‘Hannah Montana: The Movie’ offers little for parents, but the kids will love it, and while having some decent acting performances, catchy songs and some nice scenes, the majority is a drag to watch, with the film light on story and character.
Score: 3.6/10
Published: October 16th, 2015
Details
Review
Release Date: June 25th, 2009
Studio: Disney
Runtime: 102 mins
Rated: G
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Rob's Review
'Hannah Montana: The Movie', directed by Peter Chelsom is an adaptation of the 2006 Disney Channel Original Series 'Hannah Montana'.
'Hannah Montana: The Movie' follows Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) and her family as she attempts to lead a double life as pop sensation Hannah Montana. The movie focus on Miley and her family Jackson Stewart (Jason Earles) and Robby Stewart (Billy Ray Cyrus) going back to Tennessee for their grandmothers birthday.
If you are like me, and back in the hay day of Disney Channel when it was good and shows like 'That so Raven' and 'The Suite Life of Zack and Cody' were on, you watched 'Hannah Montana'. The story plot to most of the episodes were Miley gets into trouble because she is Hannah, or Hannah and Miley have to be at two different places at the same time, if you were expecting something different from a movie that premiered in theatres, you would be shamefully let down. Here is why; the movie is no different, it is the same barnyard with a different coat of paint. The story is the same as the TV show nothing too out of the ordinary with it.
The acting, “chewing the scenery” (over-acting) is maybe too nice of a term for this movie. The characters were bluntly bad at what they did, how do I describe it, it was like waiting for paint to dry knowing it was drying but getting disappointed when it did in fact finally dry. See that made no sense, yeah well neither did the acting. The leading cast were trying too hard to portray even the smallest of emotions and as a result made me not care about the characters and what situation they were placed into.
This is something I have not analysed before, but it should be fun for the journey, but a characters motivation. If your entire goal in a movie is to do something drastic to the plot, then when it is your time to shine, change it with no apparent reason, or motivation, it comes down to the lazy script and story writing this movie had problems with.
I could talk about continuity, but realistically I am going to class that as a problem with the show 'Hannah Montana' not the movie.
Overall, this movie had some good jokes where I laughed, but the problems with storytelling and bluntly, bad acting was not enough to save it.
Score: 0.3/10