A Legalized Form of Torture Worse than Waterboarding

[Whiny southern accent] "I'm a spoiled brat, y'all!"

This Tuesday, I went with a couple friends to Port Washington to watch Hannah Montana: The Movie. We chose that day because one of my friends gets free movie tickets every Tuesday, and there's no way I was paying to see that piece of trash. Actually, trash does not do this movie justice. It's one of those atrocities you have to see to believe. So to help you steer clear of the theater, I'm going to give you as clear a mental image as possible.

First, there's a bratty girl who always has a sour look on her face. Seriously, have you ever actually looked at Miley Cyrus for a prolonged period? She forces a smile, a furrowed brow or a goofy face to badly match her words, but her face's rest state is always a nasty pucker. And her teeth are enormous. Just looking at her for the entire movie alone made it horrifically bad. But she had to make it worse by opening that scowled mouth to yell out some poorly written lines and sing off key.

Then there's a father who is a failed southern version of Danny Tanner on Full House. Billy Ray Cyrus is clearly trapped in a time when he thought his hair and personality were considered cool, but not in the same way as an average father. It's as if he is caught in a time warp, and he becomes more deluded because he mistakes his daughter pulling him to the top for people actually liking him.

And he can't even play himself on screen. I guess the different name of the character really had him struggling, even though it nearly rhymed with his own. Or he is a great actor and just a bad father in real life. In that case, he was dead-on. Miley is a brat, so he has her blow off her responsibilities to go to Tennessee. She acts like a nut at a dinner with the mayor, so he breaks up with his girlfriend. The logic here is hard to follow (a.k.a. ignore) if you're not eight years old.

The rest of the cast is equally as stupid. There's a bumbling English tabloid reporter whose only purpose is cheap laughs similar to what you can find in a Wayans Brothers movie. And don't forget the townspeople who desperately need eyeglasses. Hannah Montana takes off a blonde wig and everyone is shocked that she’s actually Miley. I think I would be more inclined to go along with the Clark Kent-esque disguise if she had superpowers. But everything else is some ridiculous version of reality, so why should it be suspended for that one aspect?

This movie is dreadful. The script, the acting and the music are all horrendous. I realize that I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone older than the target audience, but I don't think that matters. Kids' movies used to make more sense, be mildly entertaining for the adults who were dragged along (check out a Pee Wee movie if you don't believe me. There are jokes aimed at the parents), and have some sort of lesson to be learned. There’s no real lesson in this movie. They push that whole "it's not the destination, it's the journey" garbage down everyone's throats, but that’s less of a moral and more of something they got off an inspirational cubicle poster with a cat on it.

I laughed a lot during those two hours I will never get back, but that was mostly due to my friends and I fighting over a pair of 3D glasses (the movie is not in 3D, we just brought them along) and making jokes amongst ourselves about how stupid a scene was (Miley goes around in a revolving door about 12 times, but it was supposed to be dramatic).

Don't see this movie unless it's free, a funny friend is on hand and you have a high threshold for pain.