Ronnie (Miley Cyrus) is not looking forward to spending her summer with her father, who divorced her mother when she was eleven.
Ronnie awkwardly avoids any connection with her father by spending a majority of her time on the beach, located right outside her father’s house. She has had some past trouble with the law, which makes her near immediate connection with the local disreputable crowd understandable, but her isolated brush with the law affected her in a positive light.
She spends a majority of her time reading books and saving a newly found nest of sea turtles, which opens the door for her love interest Will, ( Liam Hemsworth) to make his entrance. They spend the next weeks together in the typical young romance ways: swimming, strolling the beach, and protecting the turtles that brought them together.
Everything appears to be perfect in Ronnie’s young world, and her relationship with her father is mending as well. The shift occurs as Will’s family is introduced to Ronnie.
Will’s family is incredibly rich, which is an incredible surprise to Ronnie, but not necessarily that suprising to the faithful Nicolas Sparks fans. Sparks (he wrote the book that inspired the film) enjoys mixing a middle-class or poor individual in a relationship with a wealthy individual. Will’s family wealth nearly rips the carefree couple apart,and to mend the rift, Ronnie reveals a deeply rooted secret from her past.
She’s a musical savant, and has reached Carnegie Hall by the ripe age of seven with her incredible piano playing skills. This impresses her new boyfriend, and finishes melting the ice between Ronnie and her father.
The father/daughter duo used music as their personal language that bridges all wounds that time has created, and now that she was playing again, Ronnie’s relationship with her father is completely restored, only to be radically shattered by the news of an illness threatening his life.
The death of her father pushes Ronnie to complete a, “last song” in order to best honor the memory of her dad. The conclusion brings the emotional moment of Ronnie learning that in spite of the past, her father loved her and this pushes her to evolve into the young woman he and her mother would like her to be.
The hype surrounding this movie was largely created by Miley Cyrus’ bold statements of the movie’s one- eighty from the Hannah Montana role that made her famous. While Ronnie is darker than Hannah, there is no difference in the two characters from the perspective of the acting. Her efforts in the film are by no doubt some of her best, but it comes across as average. This is not the role that will become her breakout moment that shatters her Disney darling image.
The Last Song is a typical adaptation of a Nicolas Sparks novel. He enjoys using illness, loss, and family to stir the emotional heartstrings of the reader, and the film achieves the same pillars of familiarity. It is a nice film that most of the audience can relate to the love and loss that Ronnie discovers.
