The New Miley Cyrus Movie Will Land your Kids in Therapy

You may, like me, have a daughter who is a huge Miley Cyrus fan. She may even be such a fan that she's convinced her younger brother and sister to become big fans as well. They may sing her songs, wear her t-shirts, and count down the days until the release of her new movie, the Last Dance



You may want to take them, as I took my kids tonight, to see the Last Song.



Whatever you do, do NOT take your children to see this movie. You'll walk right out and straight to the psychiatrist's office to deal with their trauma.



Do you remember Marley and Me with its misleading advertising campaign featuring a cute little yellow lab puppy with a big red bow around his neck? Parents across America were fooled into taking their children to see a movie that dealt with miscarriage, and marital discord. And at the end... the dog died.



Well, the Last Song has Marley and Me beat. By a long shot.



It even has Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, and Beaches beat.



Or to quote my 8-year old daughter, if I managed to understand her properly between heartrending sobs, "That was the saddest movie ever made in the whole history of movies and I will never forget it. Never ever ever."



And I wholeheartedly agree with her, considering I cried big, hot tears for the last hour of the movie.



A few years ago, parents took to the streets, spray painting the movie billboards of Marley and Me with the words, "The dog dies." We need to do the same this time on the dashingly romantic posters for the Last Dance. This time the graffiti needs to warn, "The dad dies."



Yes, I should have been prepared. I should have googled and searched for blog posts like this one, but I had seen the trailers, and checked that the rating was PG. I had read the synopsis that talked about a troubled teen mending the rift with her father during a summer at his beach house. I assumed that we would be subjected to some kissing, some extended music montages, and many shots of Miley Cyrus' dazzling teeth.



The promised romance developed quickly, within the first half hour of the movie, and other than some serious sassy attitude from sweet Miley, and a few swear words sprinkled throughout the make-out scenes, there was nothing too objectionable. But it was too easy, even for a Miley Cyrus movie, and I began to worry about what would take up the remaining hour of film.



And then the dad (Greg Kinnear) coughed, a weak sounding cough, and the camera focused on his suddenly pale face, and I knew where we were headed. That cough had cancer written all over it.



I could have pretended to feel sick, made up some excuse to get our family out of the theater, and I probably should have, but I didn't. I couldn't. I was like a deer frozen in headlights. Instead I sat in the dark with tears streaming down my misguided mom face as images of hospital beds, doctors with pitying faces, and a brave Miley dressed in black in a little country church with her face a mask of grief.



No one else cried during the movie. Bella held her tears in until the credits rolled and I expect that I'll get Jack's in a week or so, at breakfast time or dinner time, when I'm least expecting it.



There was no steamy sex, no brutal violence, no drugs, and few curse words, but this was no PG movie. This was an intense drama with difficult adult themes. Miley Cyrus may be trying to grow up, trying to move away from her Disney image now that her show will end next year, but Touchstone pictures had a responsibility to Miley Cyrus' vast fanbase of little girls to market the movie appropriately.



They lured us in with a romance and instead delivered a traumatic tear jerker. I'll be sending them our therapy bills.