A Meaningful and Worthwhile Family Drama

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2019)

16 June 2013. This teen pop star Miley Cyrus and Greg Kinnear movie vehicle presents a series of consistently connected family and community life issues that while predictable are intertwined in such a fashion as to make them entertaining, believable, and emotional, and meaningfully relevant. While one could stereotype or be turned off by Miley's character, there is something that seems more significant going here and while the many plot tragedies that continue to build up in this movie, there is oddly enough a rather authentic possibility of such events occurring in with such compelling convergence. This movie deals with the aftermath of divorce and its impact on children, about family, about coming of age, impulsive decision-making, blame and gossip making, jealously, love, hate, making mistakes, and death and forgiveness. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on in this movie in it all something makes sense and never becomes overly juvenile nor nauseatingly repetitive or crisis just for crisis sakes.
What is particularly fascinating is that this popular teen format shot in the traditional classic mass audience cinematic photographic and directorial style found in much movie such as Uptown Girls (2003) or Fly Away Home (1996) Whale Rider (2002) that have at their core a animal preservation themes unlike the more raw and gritty independent video approach such Margot at the Wedding (2007) or The Tree of Life (2011), it nevertheless captures the emotive and intellectual interest by its subject matter and what appears to be a close to reality outcomes of each scene as well as the connections between them. The biggest weakness if one can could it that is that this movie doesn't have the focused emotive intensity as one finds in such movies as Where the Lilies Bloom (1974) or the innovative and dazzling cinematic imagination as found in Moonrise Kingdom (2012) or the scintillating and chilling factor as in The Lovely Bones (2009) or the big screen epic nature as the historical Chinese themed The Joy Luck Club (1993), the more layered emotional diverse comedy drama of Little Miss Sunshine (2006) or even perhaps the singular anguishing search of meaning as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011). This movie might be more associated with the family dramas as Georgia Rule (2007) or Nanny Diaries (2007).