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Our Rating
  3 stars

Duration: 102 mins

Review
Teenage pop star Hannah Montana (aka Miley Stewart) starts going "all Californian" by ruining her best friend's birthday party, neglecting her brother and fighting model Tyra Banks for a pair of shoes.

Her down-home dad Robby Ray thinks this is unacceptable behaviour, so he takes Miley for a "two-week Hannah detox" back to their old home in rural Tennessee, where everybody is "all britches and boots" - which is apparently a good thing.

What follows is a fairly predictable plot involving teen romance, old-fashioned values and lots of Hannah Montana songs. There are also several subplots, including an adult romance for Robby Ray, a comic villain trying to find out Hannah's secret, an evil developer who wants to build - shock, horror! - a shopping mall in Miley's small town, and (just for the heck of it) an escaped ferret... so there is always something happening on screen.

Fortunately most of it is well done, and Hannah fans won't be disappointed. However, the use of electronic effects (auto-tuning?) on some of Hannah's vocals just makes them sound synthetic and seems to contradict the film's themes of honesty and simplicity.

Language: A few minor insults: "losers", "move your bum you old cow", "screwed up" and "wretched, soul-less succubus".

Violence/distressing scenes: None. Most of the physical action is played for laughs, including: Hannah and her friend steal a golf cart and almost run a man over; a volleyball hits Miley in the face, knocking her over; she fights Tyra Banks in a shoe store; Miley's friend is dropped from the top of a skateboard ramp, but only her dignity is hurt; Miley falls off a swinging rope, but we don't see the impact; a cake explodes to comic effect; a man accidentally eats very hot chilli and drinks water from a dog bowl; he slips on some nuts and crashes onto a table; he is later hit by a loose plank, rolls down a hill and falls into a muddy puddle; when spying on Hannah, he falls out of a tree; Miley falls off her horse; in separate incidents, her brother is bitten on the bottom by an alligator, falls off a ladder and gets his head caught in a revolving door.

Sex/nudity: Very mild: a ferret runs up a man's leg, so he takes off his trousers, exposing his underpants; Hannah and her boyfriend swim in a waterhole together (she is fully clothed, he is briefly shirtless); later they slow dance; at the end of the movie they kiss; Robby Ray and his love interest also kiss.

Drugs/alcohol: None.

Target audience: Ages 6 to 12

Themes/Values: The implicit themes are honesty, simplicity and loyalty. The explicit theme is "Life is a climb, but the view is great." Cue the Country-and-Western song!

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