The Last Song

Directed by Julie Anne Robinson. Starring Miley Cyrus, Bobby Coleman, Liam Hemsworth, Hallock Beals, Greg Kinnear PG cert, gen release, 107 min

Miley Cyrus grows up in this sappy teen soaper, writes DONALD CLARKE

YOUNG MILEY Cyrus is the victim of so much unkind online abuse (apparently avatargirl666 thinks she “is like 2-faced and stuckup”) that any decent person will yearn to enjoy her dramatic debut. Such efforts may be in vain.

The Last Songis, alas, yet another tear-duct agitator from that bizarrely successful blubologist Nicholas Sparks. If you have suffered adaptations of Sparks novels such as A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Nights in Rodantheor, most recently, Dear John, you will know what to expect. An hour of idyllic faffing around a maritime area of some southern state is followed by 45 minutes or so of greatly protracted calamity.

We are honour-bound not to reveal the precise nature of that disaster, but take note that the film is called The Last Song. Last for whom? Keep your ears open for a tell-tale cough somewhere round the halfway point. It's all going dark.

Ms Cyrus plays a supernaturally stroppy teenager – Bella Swan seems perky by comparison – who has been sent to spend the summer with her dad (coasting Greg Kinnear), a former composer, in a beach house on the outskirts of Sparks-by-Sea.

Yet to be reconciled to her parents’ separation, Miley spends most of the first act lowering her head beneath shoulder level, arranging her arms in the semaphore position for “N” and exhaling noisily. She, nonetheless, manages to hook up with a tolerant posh boy and finds time to save some poor wee sea turtles.

The young star is very annoying in the film, but, to be fair, she is meantto be annoying. There's every chance that Cyrus might still break through into mainstream, grown-up (as opposed to "adult") cinema. Rather, the problems lie with Mr Sparks's increasingly predictable plotlines.

It’s all very well for him to brazenly manipulate his audience, but does he have to use the same emotional levers every time? Will Miley, currently shunning the piano, come round and finish her dad’s half-written epic masterwork? Of course she will. It goes: “Don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart . . . ” Only kidding.