Word: fatherness
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Based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, the film explores the family drama that ensues when Ronnie (Cyrus) and her brother are sent to spend the summer with their father (Steve Miller). Ronnie clearly resents her father because of her parents’ recent divorce, a resentment that leads her to push aside her brilliant talent as a Julliard-bound pianist in favor of an emotional seclusion from anything that reminds her of him. However, upon meeting the handsome Will Blakelee, played by Liam Hemsworth, Ronnie is able to soften her heart and open it to her family again, bonding with...
...Just stay out of it!” It is awkward to watch this seemingly edgy character forced to fit into a family role, especially when she has to balance her soft, caring side for her brother with her bitter hatred for her father. This role is also one that should require more foul language or outward disrespect for authority figures than Cyrus is permitted to deliver in this Disney production. Thus, the outward harshness that Ronnie is trying to emit seems wholly at odds with her saccharine actions...
...character motivations in the film are also shallower than one would hope for. Discovering that Ronnie’s dark secret is that she was arrested for shoplifting and that her father didn’t actually commit the crime he was accused of feels entirely anticlimactic. It constantly feels like the film takes the easy way out, resolving conflicts by claiming they were never serious to begin with. The film never embraces the darker emotional toll that one would expect of such a supposedly dysfunctional family...
Nearly 50 years ago my father, who died March 20 at 90, wrote The Quiet Crisis to warn Americans against the overuse of natural resources and the loss of open spaces. He urged the adoption of a new land consciousness to protect the environment and argued that the ideals inherent in the preservation of wilderness, watersheds and recreation areas must be given the same value as the benefits derived from exploiting our abundant resources. Such convictions were consistent with his commitment to public service and social justice. During his time at the Interior Department, he also required the Washington Redskins...
...father believed that a commitment to conservation transcended the partisan divide. He dreamed that a commitment to conservation could bring this country together again...