Hannah Montana: The Movie review

Unless you have been living under a rock or don't know any teenage kids, you will know all about the music phenomena that is Hannah Montana. She is hardly ever off the Disney Channel screens and her peachy-keen looks are plastered over billboards across the country. Now she has made the leap from small screen to big in her first story-driven feature length film.

Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) is a teen pop sensation, but she hides a secret. The diva is really a down-home girl called Miley Stewart. Outside of her family and close friends no one realises that a wig and sparkly dress give the schoolgirl a unique double life. But with all the attention that stardom brings, the little missy starts to get a bit big for her sequinned britches so her dad and manager Bobby Ray Stewart (Billy Ray Cyrus) decides that what she needs are britches of a blue-jean variety. With that he whisks her away to visit her country cousins in Tennessee to get her more grounded.

Life back on the farm is not what Miley/Hannah is now used to, but things change when a farm hand by the name of Travis re-enters her life and first love blossoms. At the same time Bobby Ray finds that a second chance at love is calling for him too.

The film has a run-of-the-mill story arc about saving the rural life from the invasion of the bad city companies but ultimately it's a coming-of-age morality tale that sends out a refreshingly wholesome message to teen girls everywhere. It's very much a father and daughter story too (in real-life as well as in the film) and this leads to other characters that have big parts in the TV series, being pushed to the sidelines.

The music veers from a hee-haw hoedown, to rock, to gentle ballads seamlessly and never threatens to overbear the basic story. I must confess to wincing when I saw that the film contained 12 new songs, but in the end it was painless - even pleasurable at times!

Overall it's a safe and predictable Disney film but its target audience of teenage girls won't care about that. If they go in as fans of the TV show, they remain so after seeing Hannah on the big screen. In these bleak times there is nothing wrong with a good, old-fashioned feel-good movie.

Rob Andrews