Who's In It: Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Melora Hardin, Margo Martindale, Vanessa Williams
The Basics: A teenage girl with multiple personality disorder and no support group to stop her, only a dad with weird hair who cashes in on the fact that one of her Sybil-like characters is a pop star, flies back and forth between whatever voice happens to dominate her head at any particular moment. One minute she's helping to build a really gay-looking chicken coop and the next she's beating up Tyra Banks over a pair of ugly shoes on Rodeo Drive. The film, offering this mentally ill person no sympathy, tortures her until all she can do is stand on stage, weeping, broken, holding a wig and not knowing if it belongs on her head or not.
What's The Deal: What I meant to say is that this is a movie my six year-old niece is going to totally go ballistic over. In fact, I called her on the phone the other day to ask her to bring me up to speed on the TV show that provides the premise for this film. In her own words: "Miley goes to school and is regular. But then she puts on the wig and lots of lipstick and she's Hannah. And then she sings songs. And her two friends know she's Hannah but no one else. Except her dad. He knows she's Hannah too. Sometimes the mom comes around. [Note to readers: I can't verify this as fact or not because in the movie the mom's already long dead and is played, in a photograph, by a super-grimacing Brooke Shields. And that's also how you know it's from Disney. One dead parent is the rule. Always.] Anyway, six year-old girls of the world, unite and take over. This one is all for you.
The Weird Secret Message of The Film: It's okay to want to be rich and famous. In fact, you should want to be rich and famous. But then you should also not want to be those things. You should just want to ride horses and paint chicken coops into rainbow colors and be neighbors with the guys from Rascal Flatts and go on hayrides and stuff and love your boring small town and not try to be anything other than a simpleton. And if you want both then you will have to lie constantly. And lying constantly is okay, too, as long as it gets you what you want. Fortunately its target audience will not overthink these things.
How Many Songs Are In This Totally Sweet And Innocent (Yet Maybe Morally Confusing) Movie For Little Girls: One. Or 12. Actually I think it's 12. It's just that they all sound like the same song, broken up into twelve parts. Most of them are about dreams and how it's good to have them. Look, unless you're raising a baby goth you're going to take your daughter and all her friends to this movie, so just suck it up and deal.