Hail to the tween

>> Miley Cyrus takes prepubescent girls by
storm in Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus:
Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour 3-D

by SACHA JACKSON

Miley Cyrus plays Hannah Montana, the pop star alter ego of Miley Stewart, a regular high schooler who hides her pop star identity from her friends, on Disney’s hit show Hannah Montana. Got that?

Multiple identities aside, it’s Cyrus, daughter of “Achey Breaky Heart” singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who’s the persona and the voice behind it all.

Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour 3-D is the movie version of Cyrus’s recently concluded cross-country tour, which took approximately 12 minutes to sell out. The movie, then, is a chance for Miley fans—the majority of which are prepubescent girls—to see the concert that potentially, had their parents procured them tickets, could have changed their lives.

This is no false claim. In fact, one radio DJ says as much in a Miley-free scene in which fathers race across an empty parking lot in high-heeled shoes. The winner, who proudly displays a well-worn snapshot of his daughter, gets free tickets to the concert.

The show opens with Cyrus, 15, as Hannah Montana, and she reemerges later on as her singer-songwriter “real” self. Like Clark Kent, Cyrus’s alter ego comes to life with a change in physical appearance. In Cyrus’s case her transformation takes place when she dons a straight blonde wig, a device that makes her look less like a teenage star and more like a miniature version of Samantha from Sex and the City.

Though raised by a country star, Cyrus’s music is decidedly pop with a rock ’n’ roll edge; a guitar solo here, a drum roll there. She’s more Avril Lavigne than Britney Spears—her dancing is not overly sexy, her clothing is not revealing.

The majority of the movie focuses on the concert itself, with a few behind-the-scenes moments here and there, but there’s little depth in these asides. One scene, in which Cyrus teaches papa Cyrus (who has swapped his famous mullet for the Aniston shag) a song she wrote for her grandfather, is surprisingly dull. What could have been a more in-depth look at their family life is instead little more than a teen girl sitting awkwardly on the couch with her father.

Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus:
Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour 3-D
is now in theatres

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