Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert (2008)

The Hannah Montana Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds 3-D Concert unquestionably works as a piece of product. The movie plays to the base, offering everything a pre-pubescent girl could want in a concert movie featuring their favorite pop princess. The 3-D effects are solid, offering perspectives truly unattainable to anyone at the live show - the highlight being a bird's eye view of the drummer throwing one of his sticks about fifteen feet in the air and then catching it and continuing with the beat. If the film were happy to take itself for what it is, nothing more than a big old advertisement for the "product" that is this young performer, it would make little sense to deride the film for being such an empty construction. However, at one point during an intimate moment staged for the cameras, as Miley and her dad (the artist formally known as Billy Ray Cyrus) play guitar together, Billy Ray assures us that what he likes best about Miley's music is that it's just so "real". Sitting through nearly ten minutes of tour rehearsal footage at the beginning of this movie, it's obvious the concert is choreographed to within an inch of its life. At one point dancers nearly drop Miley during a move she then wants removed from the act the next night. The stage director (Kenny Ortega - the man responsible for Disney's other pop culture phenomenon High School Musical), and her mother tell her more or less to stop whining and just do it. While we are treated to an example of them pulling off the move perfectly, this is one of the many moments where audiences have to wonder how "real" anything can be in this patently plastic show. Artists can come up with real insights when dabbling with alter egos. When considering the id/ego/superego personalities of Slim Shady/Marshal Mathers/Eminem, his audience can glean different meanings from the songs depending on which character he's inhabiting at the moment because they are three very different points of view. There is no discernable difference between Hannah Montana, Miley Stewart (the character Cyrus plays on her television show), and Miley Cyrus other than one wears a blonde wig. Her songs and her personalities are entirely interchangeable, just as the vast majority of teen idol pop stars are. The movie succeeds because it whips up excitement, encourages young fans to scream at the screen with uncontainable emotion, and offers note perfect sing-along ready recreations of the songs the fans already know, and all of it is presented with a near military proficiency. But the reason this exists is simply to perpetuate the brand that is Hannah and/or Miley. Yes the film works, but it's nothing more than Triumph of the Shill. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide