Having an estranged relative who lives in an old beach house filled with surf memorabilia has always been a personal dream of mine. Said relative would inevitably be a middle-aged man with tough, tanned skin and salty blonde locks that he keeps tied out of his face with his late grandpa’s bandanna. I would go live with him for the summer to reconcile some long-standing familial dispute which I had been impacted by, despite not being directly responsible for the conflict.
I, unlike the edgy “problem-children” that normally play leading roles in such movies, wouldn’t begrudgingly sit through another of Uncle Ridge’s (or Stan’s, or Bill’s or whomever’s) speeches about how this summer is an opportunity to “start over” and “make new friends.” No, I would be long out the door, down on the boardwalk chatting up every annoyed local about how majestic the ocean they see every day is.
At least, that’s what I would do if I were in Julie Anne Robinson’s “The Last Song.” In the movie, Teen Girl Ronnie and Kid Brother Jonah are shipped off by their mom to go spend the summer with their dad at his Georgia beach house. While there, Ronnie (Miley Cyrus) falls in love with hot local sand volleyball player/aquarium worker/mechanic, Will (Liam Hemsworth, the pairing of whom with Miley Cyrus is iconic. 2010’s nostalgia out the roof.)
Released in March of 2010, the movie is based on a Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name that was published in September of 2009. A quick turnaround, and boy, am I glad for it, because I don’t know what I would do without this staple summertime flick gracing my shelves amidst the swath of other coastal tales for over a decade now. “The Last Song” checks all the boxes that these niche-seeming-yet-mass-market beach themed movies all appear to have: family dysfunction, love story and beach.
Despite the movie’s cliché narrative and its diminishing of the majestic ocean and costal surf town culture to mere background aesthetics, I still watch it for its cliché narrative and costal surf town culture aesthetics. The ocean lifestyle has such a low-stakes-yet-high-creativity atmosphere that I love. One of the sells of movies like this is the opportunity to escape average life, start over and reinvent yourself in a place rich in nature and a whole crowd of new people who don’t know you and therefore don’t have any expectations for who you are.
“The Last Song” has just been with me for forever, and I’m still a sucker for it. Like, this is the movie where Miley Cyrus taught me that after I kiss a boy during an all-night stakeout to protect baby turtle eggs, I am to walk home and lean against my shut front door and listen to the soft shh shh of the ocean while sighing dreamily, and it just doesn’t get much better than that.
