‘Hannah Montana’ wigs out in Tennessee

Three out of four stars (Rated G) Running time: 102 minutes. Reviewed at The Woodlands Tinseltown 17 on April 10.

I keep a favorite cartoon on my office door penned by Mike Peters for his “Mother Goose and Grimm” comic strip.  In it a lady at the Daily Planet points her finger at Clark Kent and yells, “Hey…wait a minute…you’re Superman!” followed by the caption, “Clark Kent makes the ill-fated decision to wear contacts.”

I see great similarity of that cartoon with the extremely lucrative “Hannah Montana” franchise.  While I’ve never watched so much as one minute of the popular Disney Channel series or seen the blockbuster Hannah Montana 3-D concert movie last year, I really find it incredulous that an aspiring pop singer can put on a blonde wig and maintain an alter-ego personality unbeknownst to anyone except her family and close friends.

Now we have “Hannah Montana: The Movie.”  The usher warned me—“this place has been overrun with little girls.”  No problem—I’m a veteran of similar fare, having previously endured Britney Spears’ “Crossroads” and Mariah Carey’s “Glitter” along with Lindsay Lohan and Ashlee Simpson movies, too.

Into the mega-stadium I went, the only adult male sitting alone amongst a packed house of overly excited pre-adolescent girls with their moms and a few scattered dads, and some teens, including the young lady sitting next to me who text-messaged during the entire movie.

We meet Miley Cyrus, playing Miley Stewart, who in turn is the superstar pop singer Hannah Montana when wearing a blonde wig from the Early Dolly Parton Collection.  “She’s the most popular teenager in the world!” says her publicist (Vanessa Williams).

Ah, but Miley’s father Robby Ray Stewart (Billy Ray Cyrus, her real life father) is concerned that the good life in Beverly Hills is going to her head. 

Oh, you mean like Miley having a catfight with Tyra Banks in an exclusive shoe store over a pair of high heels that ends up in all the tabloids?  Or Miley stiffing her best bud Lilly’s sixteenth birthday party at the Santa Monica Pier? (My twins are lucky to get the party room at McDonalds.)

Robby Ray pirates Miley away on a private jet bound for a music awards show in New York—she actually complains about the size of the bathroom on board—and sets down in her hometown of Crowley Corner, Tennessee.  “We’re taking Hannah Montana away from you,” he says.  In other words, Robby Ray wants Miley to get away from the spotlight and return to her country roots—for two weeks, or at least until the next royalties check arrives in the mail.

Miley’s country roots aren’t too shabby.  Grandma’s spread dwarfs the Ponderosa. Plus there’s a young hunk ranch hand named Travis (Lucas Till) who had all the girls in the audience screaming in adoration.

The table is set for rest of the movie.  Miley meets a boy, Robby Ray meets a woman, a developer plans to build a mall and destroy the ambience of Crowley Corner—still undiscovered by Wal-Mart and evidently not wired yet for cable television, since none of the natives can figure out that Miley is really Hannah Montana.  Of course Hannah finally shows up to belt out some songs at a fundraiser.

In other words, it’s a pretty dumb, predictable story, at least to a suburban sophisticate such as myself.  But for a ten year-old girl, the target audience, “Hannah Montana: The Movie” is good, clean G-rated fun without so much as one wet kiss.  Yee-haw!