The Last Song

This outrageously sentimental weepie is as excruciating as other films based on novels by Nicholas Sparks, Dear John and Message in a Bottle among them. Miley Cyrus, all teeth and scowls, plays a teenage pianist who cannot forgive her parents for having separated and makes life hell for Dad (Greg Kinnear) when she's forced to spend the summer with him at a resort in the deep south. Little does she know he has terminal cancer. What with that, a chaste affair with a local rich hunk (Australian veteran of Ramsay Street, Liam Hemsworth) and saving sea turtles' eggs from raccoons, it's quite a summer. The film is as disposable as the cheap tissues used to absorb the easy tears it seeks to elicit.