Our look at the closing lines of the week’s biggest new-music reviews takes a trip to the theater to round up reactions to Hannah Montana: The Movie, which lands in theatres today. One critic who was so traumatized by the movie, she devolved into text-speak!
• “Chipmunk-cheeked ‘tween sensation Cyrus, like the film she anchors, is enthusiastic, unpretentious, and aggressively inoffensive, as are the blandly upbeat songs she warbles. Town & Country director Peter Chelsom isn’t making a movie so much as delivering product and protecting a lucrative Disney brand. On that level, he succeeds. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant, as the only folks Montana is interested in pleasing are prepubescent girls and Disney stockholders.” [Nathan Rabin, AV Club]
• “To its credit, Hannah acknowledges its own internal conflict: The tension between Hannah and Miley parallels the conflict between the maturing Miley Cyrus and her TV persona, a child who will no doubt be recycled by Disney Channel till the end of time. The film is also generous in giving a significant scene to Taylor Swift, who as a singer-songwriter can blow Hannah’s doors off. It may be a way of saying, ‘Your moment, my movie,’ but it shows the confidence of a mature, or perhaps maturing, talent.” [John Anderson, Newsday]
• “I’m not sure which one of her dads Miley Cyrus most trusts for advice, but whichever Ray most has a foot in reality, I hope they sit their teenage daughter down and tell her two stories about two singers. One is about another blonde from a neighboring Southern state, a girl who kept her own name and all the fame that came with it and was last seen buying Cheetos barefoot in a 7-Eleven. The other is about a country superstar who thought his fortunes would improve if he split himself into two. His alter ego, Chris Gaines, brought down both careers. Fairytale success rarely ends well. Let’s hope between all her schizophrenic lives, at least one offers a chance of stability.” [Amy Nicholson, BoxOffice.com]
• “i love hannah sooo much. she’s so CLEAN, you know?” [Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times]
Hannah Montana: The Movie [Rotten Tomatoes]
Did the Chris Gaines album really bring down Garth Brooks’ career? I thought it was more along the lines of an “eff you, I have more money than God now, see ya later suckers” move.
I have an 8 year old niece, so I’ve ended up having to watch Hannah Montana a couple of times…she’s such a spoiled, mouthy brat on the show that I don’t know how anyone could find her likable.
Yea, I thought Gaines came about after he peaked and he figured he had nothing to lose.
I thought Chris Gaines was the defining artist of a generation that itself was deeply lost in an era of soul searching and contemplation. Was his haircut not the prelude to emo, let alone a prelude to a significant portion of Ryan Adams’s career?
Garth definitely took Chris Gaines seriously. He intended it to be a film project, but that part of it never came to fruition. He feels the album is impossible to understand because it was meant to be part of this larger project — which he still thinks about trying to realize.
@annkpowers: At least he flaunted his thespian chops as Gaines on “Behind the Music.”
“I just lived a haaard life, ya know.”