The combination of Nicholas Sparks’ ‘misery-lit lite’ and teenage singer didn’t work too well in A Walk To Remember with Mandy Moore, but he fares better adapting his own novel about a rebellious teenager (Miley Cyrus, in a non-singing role) who spends a few months with her estranged father (Greg Kinnear), has a chaste romance with a handsome (and usually shirtless) rich kid (ex-Neighbour Hemsworth) and — guess what? — “was never the same again after that summer”.
Teen girls raised on Hannah Montana and Twilight may be blindsided by the film’s sheer ordinariness, not to mention its third-act emotional downturn, but the film is engaging and honest, and its target market will find Cyrus’ inchoate rebelliousness relatable.