HANNAH MONTANA AND MILEY CYRUS: BEST OF BOTH WORLDS CONCERT
Rated:GOkay folks, pop quiz time! Your responses to the following questions will determine whether you’re the appropriate audience for the lubrigiously titled 3D concert film, Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert.1) Hannah Montana is…
A. The capital of Montana.
B. Kristen Wiig’s newest “Saturday Night Live” character.
C. The titular teen pop star on an insanely popular Disney Channel series.
D. The working title for the top-secret Cloverfield sequel.2) Miley Cyrus is…
A. The sole surviving descendent of the ancient Persian king, Cyrus the Great.
B. A new Applebee’s sandwich, available for a limited time only.
C. The teenage daughter of ’90s country-music star Billy Ray Cyrus who plays Hannah Montana on TV and is launching a singing career of her own.
D. The woman who does your taxes.
If you correctly answered C to both questions, then you are either a tween or the parent of a tween and were undoubtedly part of the hundreds of thousands of moviegoers who helped the movie gross a record-breaking $30 million on Superbowl Weekend. If you picked any other answer, you’re obviously a childless person over the age of 13 and therefore aren’t legally allowed to purchase tickets to this picture. Sorry about that. But hey, the good news is, U2 3D may be playing on a screen nearby, so why don’t you see what Bono and the gang are up to while we cool kids talk here, okay? Here’s $20 for some snacks. Have a good time–we’ll pick you up after the movie.
All right, now that those lamewads are gone, let’s talk about this totally sweet concert. Honest to blog, you guys, Miley Cyrus is totally awesome. Her songs totally rock and her outfits are, like, totally cute. She’s even better in concert than she is on her show! She’s totally cooler than that girl who won “American Idol” last season. And she’s not a skanky cow like Britney or Lindsay. Ugh, those two totally gross me out. And how about those Jonas Brothers, who play two numbers while Hannah is backstage transforming into Miley? They are just so totally cute, right? Did you read that story in J-14 about how Miley and Nick Jonas were secretly dating but then, like, totally broke up? Isn’t that totally sad? I hope those two are doing okay…
Eh, who am I kidding? I can’t pretend that I’m an actual member of the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus nation. But having seen the Best of Both Worlds Concert in a theatre full of screaming tweenage girls (as well as a fair number of boys) and their shell-shocked moms and dads, I can–wait for it–totally see the source of her appeal. Cyrus is this generation’s Annette Funicello, a fresh-faced ingénue who energetically belts out non-threatening pop music under the Disney banner. Parents leery of exposing their kids to the suggestive antics of a Britney or an Ashlee can feel secure in the knowledge that, both in and out of her Hannah Montana get-up, Miley knows how to rock out without acting out. Kids, meanwhile, can get their groove on to music that’s not as babyish as Raffi but not as hardcore as The Ramones. So everybody wins…except, of course, those people who like their rock songs to have a little variety in their chord changes, as well as lyrics with more depth than “Chill it out, take it slow/Then you rock out the show.”
Clocking in at a scant 75 minutes, the Best of Both Worlds Concert is nothing if not economical. Director Bruce Hendricks keeps the focus primarily on the 3D-enhanced stage performance, occasionally cutting away to behind-the-scenes footage of Miley rehearsing her dance moves or hanging out with her dad, Billy Ray. Much of this material is standard EPK stuff; the only bit of drama occurs when Miley is dropped onstage during one of her dance routines, leading her to try to get that bit cut from the show, an attempted power play that is shot down by her mother, of all people.
The concert itself is well-photographed, although Hendricks’ use of 3D is far more conventional than what’s on display in U2 3D. That film is a work of visual art; this one follows the tradition of treating the technology primarily as a marketing gimmick. Of course, the movie’s target audience won’t care one bit. They’re more than happy singing along with Hannah/Miley and squealing over the Jonas Brothers. (Based on the way the kids reacted at the showing I attended, you’d think these Greg Brady look-alikes were the second coming of The Beatles.) For this crowd, Best of Both Worlds is a concert film on the level of Stop Making Sense and The Last Waltz. The rest of us can only hope that, in a few years, they’ll be ready to hear what real rock ‘n’ roll sounds like.
Critic: Ethan Alter
Distributor: DISNEY
Running Time: 75 mins.
Color: Color
Production: A Walt Disney Pictures presentation
Genre: Music
Sound: Digital 3D
Language: English
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