With imagination running out in Hollywood, producers have to look to other forms of entertainment for inspiration. Nicholas Sparks books have always been a very good place with hit movies such as A Walk to Remember, Message in a Bottle, and The Notebook. In 2010, Hollywood made 2 of his books into movies - Dear John and The Last Song starring Miley Cyrus and Greg Kinnear.
Before seeing this movie, I made it a point to read the book so I could compare the two mediums. This story wasn't a typical Sparks novel in the sense of about finding your true love. This is a story about the dysfunctional yet oddly functional relationship between an 18-year old teenage and her estranged father. Roni and her 10 year old brother come to live at their father's house in South Carolina, on the water, for the summer much to Roni's dislike. She blames her dad for her parents splitting up and for making her hate music. She is a very talented piano player as well as her father and ever since her father and mother split, she has never touched a piano and blames her father for it. When she arrives at her father's house, she immediately rebels by not saying hello to her father and going out until late hours of the night. On one of her outings she meets a boy, a preppy boy who she instantly dislikes but over the course of the summer turns into something more for both of them. But the real story isn't about the learning to let someone in your heart. No, this movie is about the love a father has for his daughter come what may. This is where the acting shines.
Kinnear and Cyrus play the father/daughter relationship to a science. Watching the two go back and forth, you believe they are the real thing. That might sound like an obvious observation but I have seen enough movies to know that there are few actors that can make a father/daughter relationship seem real. When the real blow of the movie comes (actually there is more than one) their acting gets that much better. The harder the plot, the more laden with emotions the characters are throughout the movie, the better both actors get at portraying their characters.
The movie was enjoyable, a great date movie (or of course father, daughter movie). The descriptions from the pages of the novel to the screen were exactly as I had pictured them in my head. I love movies like that. The products did a fair job of keeping the movie true to the book. Not much was changed and the things that were left out, didn't have to be in the movie for it to flow.
The only thing that gave this movie 3.5 stars out of 5 was Miley Cyrus and the way she talked throughout the whole movie. It seemed as if Cyrus was trying to speak in a strange way with her lips pursed together the whole time. It did not seem natural and at times that was enough to distract me from the rest of the movie. But despite all of that, the movie was fun to watch and I never lost interest to keep watching the movie til the very end. Overall, great entertainment.
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