"Livin' two lives is a little weird," sings
Miley Cyrus as
Hannah Montana on her signature track, "The Best of Both Worlds." Hannah Montana: The Movie and its soundtrack try to present the best of many worlds -- pop and country, California and Tennessee, Disney and non-Disney artists -- and it's also a little weird. Given the huge success of the TV series and the concert movie, it was inevitable that there would be a big-screen
Hannah Montana story, but it's almost uncanny how the movie's storyline, which involves
Hannah having to choose between pop stardom and her "real" life as regular country girl Miley Stewart, echoes Disney's efforts to separate
Cyrus' stardom from
Montana's. This tug of war of personas also shows up in the movie's music: originally,
Montana's music was based on the pop of past Disney queens like
Britney and
Christina (with a smidgen of
Avril Lavigne), but songs like "Let's Get Crazy," which makes a beat from paparazzi flashbulbs, and "The Good Life," a sugar-coated celebration of Gucci handbags and Prada shoes, sound more like fizzy caricatures of pop songs than ever. Tellingly, the best songs that
Cyrus sings on the soundtrack have her own name on them -- aside from the goofy "Hoedown Throwdown," which feels more like a parody of down-home fun than a tribute to it.
Cyrus' husky twang sounds far more natural, more down to earth and grown-up, on songs like "Don't Walk Away," "Dream," and "The Climb," all of which recall the
Shania Twain-lite of her debut album,
Breakout. This Nashville feel dominates on
Hannah Montana: The Movie, from "Butterfly Fly Away," a treacly duet between
Miley and her dad
Billy Ray, to the inclusion of songs from country stars in an attempt to add more authenticity to
Hannah's sometimes suffocating world.
Billy Ray's "Back to Tennessee" fits in smoothly with an acoustic version of
Rascal Flatts' witty "Backwards" (although their "Bless the Broken Road" drags). However, the best song on
Hannah Montana: The Movie belongs to
Taylor Swift. Her "Crazier" is more genuine, more effortless, than any of
Miley or
Hannah's tracks, which is all the more interesting considering that
Swift is, in a lot of ways, what
Hannah Montana was aiming for in the first place: a massive teen star with country roots and pop polish who seems comfortable in, and delivers the best of, both of those worlds. The soundtrack's segmented track list adds to its strangeness; after so many songs about going back home and getting back to roots, it's a little disorienting to return to
Hannah's glitzy world with "Let's Do This" and "Spotlight." At just over an hour long,
Hannah Montana: The Movie provides devoted
Hannah/
Miley fans with plenty of music for their money, but anyone else will find it exhausting. ~ Heather Phares