A film based on the latest novel by author Nicholas Sparks and starring a teenage Disney icon who has been actively pushing the boundaries of her Mickey Mouse image for the better part of the last year, The Last Song is pretty much what you would expect. Written specifically for Miley Cyrus, the film revolves around Ronnie (Cyrus), a rebellious, musically-gifted teen who has been sent to spend the summer with her father after he left the family some years earlier. Penned by the author who also wrote the novels behind The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, and last month's Dear John, the story that unfolds around Ronnie involves the exploration of young love, the navigation of complex family dynamics, and the alternately paralyzing and liberating nature of the struggles and/or tragedies almost all of us will face in traversing either. In sum, somebody will fall in love, somebody will deal with death, and almost every single character will somehow grow and find inspiration in the existence of a kind of hope and love that are not so easily toppled by even the most difficult of life circumstances.

While The Last Song deals almost equally with romantic and familial relationships, at its core The Last Song is a love story. Like any other love story, there are obstacles to be overcome before that love is realized. And entering the film's frame as the core example of those obstacles in full bloom is Cyrus' Ronnie. When we first see her, she is dressed in black and still living down a recent arrest. When she first sees her father (Greg Kinnear), she silently breezes by his excited greeting with no more than a look of resentment, even paying her younger brother off to make sure her father does not find her later that afternoon. When she finally arrives home late at night, the thought that her father might have been concerned or cared about her absence does not just seem to be a consideration she has chosen to disrespect but a reality that doesn't even seem to have crossed her mind. "I want you to believe me," she tells her father the following day, "but obviously you can't do that." And in her words, she also gives the impression that she doesn't even believe her father has the capacity to see her as a child he might love.

But more than just an issue that impacts Ronnie and Steve's relationship, what we quickly see is that Ronnie's inability to believe in and/or receive her father's love has an effect that reaches much wider than just the one relationship. When an athletic young local (Liam Hemsworth) accidentally knocks Ronnie's drink onto her and rushes to make amends, just as with her father, Ronnie is quick to push away all efforts to apologize or help as insincere. When the boy, Will, shows up again when Ronnie has taken it upon herself to protect a nest of turtle eggs behind her father's house, Ronnie again greets his efforts to help with rejection and the assumption that he must have some ulterior motive. Even after she has begun to trust Will and see him as someone who she might love and who might really love her, one misstep on his part has Ronnie pushing him away with an almost fiercer distrust of love than when the film began. Cap everything off with the fact that Ronnie (who was taught to play piano by her father and considered somewhat of a prodigy as a child) has refused to play piano since the day her father left, and we see that directly tied to her inability to accept and believe in love is also an inability to accept almost any gift that might be given her in love, and in turn, to live her life to the fullest.

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