Currently, one of my nine-year old daughter's absolute favorite people in the world is Miley Cyrus, who plays the "Hannah Montana" character on the Disney Channel television show. Cyrus is touring the country doing concerts, but tickets are next to impossible to get. If you are lucky enough to have an opportunity to purchase them on the secondary market, the prices have been as high as two or three thousand dollars for one ticket. To a concert. To watch a teenager sing and dance. Needless to say, going to the concert was not in my plans. Instead, we went to see
Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour , the movie version, at a limited engagement in our local theater.

I received an email notification in October or November alerting me that this movie would be coming to theaters for one week only, beginning February 1, 2008, and that I could purchase advance tickets at that time, but I dismissed it thinking that it was just a movie and if we could fit it into our schedule, I would just go to the box office the day of the showing and get tickets. In Mid-January, after hearing so many of my friends discussing how they already had tickets, I began to think that I might need to get tickets ahead of time as well. One week before the movie that I wanted to attend, I reserved tickets online with my credit card. My first few choices of times were already sold out, but I was able to get four tickets to the 9:45 PM showing on a Saturday night – at that point the only other choices for that day were 8:00 AM or Midnight. A sold out movie means big crowds, and even though we arrived at the theater almost an hour before our show, there was already a large line of people waiting.

This Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour is a 3-D movie showing Cyrus singing in concert, with a small amount of backstage footage. You will need to wear the provided 3-D glasses for the entire movie, and the camera work is done quite nicely. There were times that I automatically craned my neck to see around the person in front of me before I realized that the image was on the film and not in the theater with me. Throughout the movie, Miley and the rest of the performers often played to the cameras and winked, makes a funny face or otherwise engaged us so that we felt like we were really there.

It begins with Miley sitting in makeup getting her hair pinned up and warming up her vocal chords – the not so glamorous part of being a star. Soon we see choreographer Kenny Ortega teaching her, the band, the backup singers and then the Jonas Brothers, who tour with Cyrus, different movements.

The movie shows an entire concert, but the film is shot in different venues, which was noticeable to me only because the camera often panned the audience since the stage, props, costumes and people involved were all the same throughout. My daughter did not notice (or care), as long as she could see Miley/Hannah singing.

The concert begins with blond Hannah Montana singing her set of songs, and midway through the show, the Jonas Brothers join her on stage to sing We Got the Party together. The boys sing When You Look Me In The Eyes and Year 3000 and when they are finished, they leave and Miley Cyrus performs the rest of the show. As Hannah, some of the songs we hear are Rock Star, Nobody's Perfect, Life's What You Make It, and I Got Nerve and then as Miley, she sings I Miss You, Girls' Night Out (GNO, Start All Over and Let's Dance among others. The concert ended appropriately with The Best of Both Worlds, the song that tells the tale of a girl who appears to be a typical teenager by day, but is a rock star at night - the theme of the Disney channel television show.

Scattered throughout the movie are behind the scenes clips of Myiley Cyrus showing some of the work that goes into putting on such a big production. The choreography in one of the songs calls for four male dancers to carry her, toss her in the air and then for one of them to catch her. One night, somebody slipped and she almost fell to the ground, and we are shown how the choreographer re-worked the dance number so that Miley would be more secure. In another clip, we see her and her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, with their guitars, and she is explaining that the song Miss You is about her grandfather. We even see the winner of the "High Heel Derb", a race one radio station invented where fathers ran a race in high heels to win Hannah Montana tickets.

There is not much behind the scenes information in this movie, but the target audience of pre-teen girls are much more interested in seeing the on-stage performances rather than seeing how the pyrotechnical aspects were put together. This is not a movie for everyone, and it 90% just a filming of a concert, but my daughter definitely enjoyed it. My husband and I were familiar with many of the songs, as the "Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus" CD is the one my daughter has been playing time and time again for the past few weeks, and it contains all of the concert songs. I even caught my son, who was at the movie under protest, singining along once or twice.

Movie tickets, and movie snack stands, are expensive, and for my family, it cost almost $100 to see Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour , which was still a lot less than most people paid for one ticket to see the live concert. Also, I commented to my husband that we probably saw the concert much better than in the stadiums that seat 50,000 or more people. For any Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana fan, this movie is a must see. It definitely geared for a specific audience, and that audience loved it.



Recommended: Yes