MovieChat Forums > The Last Song (2010) Discussion > Love the book, dislike the movie

Love the book, dislike the movie

posted 8 years ago by DarknessAngel
1 reply | jump to latest

I read the book first, and I loved it. I've reread it several times since then. At the time I first read it, I had already heard that Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth were playing Ronnie and Will in the movie version. So as I read the book I tried to picture them as these characters. But I couldn't do it, no matter how hard I tried. The girl I saw in my mind as Ronnie was actually Mackenzie Rosman. And the guy I saw as Will was another Australian actor called Luke Mitchell. As I later on watched the movie, I still felt that Mackenzie Rosman and Luke Mitchell would have been better choices.

Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth were a couple off-screen and therefore naturally had a lot of chemistry on-screen. I found this to be a bad thing, especially in the first part of the movie. Ronnie and Will are supposed to be completely different, and Ronnie is supposed to be indifferent and even rude to Will from the start. In the movie there is chemistry from the start, and Ronnies behavior comes off as more childish in the movie.

Luke Mitchell is actually not an actor that I particularly liked the first time I saw him, to be honest. But he is quite different from Mackenzie Rosman, which is why I felt the two of them could work for this movie.

As it is now, I feel that almost every role is miscast. Miley Cyrus ALMOST works as Ronnie for me, but the rest are wrong. The dad is completely different in the movie and I don't like him at all. The younger brother does not fit the description in the book. Neither does Blaze, and neither does Will. Marcus and the others should have been recast as well.

[–] JadedMermaid 7 years ago

I feel the same way. I read this book a looonggg time ago, before the movie came out, before there even was the concept of a movie, and really enjoyed it so naturally, I was excited for the movie. When I first heard that Miley Cyrus had been cast as Ronnie, I was just like "Ugh, really? Her? Why Miley out of anyone they could've cast?"

In the book, Ronnie is described as very rebellious and dark. She wore dark clothes, had black hair, dark makeup, she's what you'd most likely think of as maybe emo or goth, and that's who I had in my mind: a goth esque, moody teenager. I remember picturing Taylor Momsen, only with black hair as Ronnie. Miley never worked out in my eyes and still doesn't. Liam Hemsworth was an alright choice, I definitely thought it'd be interesting to see a girl like book Ronnie falling for a guy like him, but Miley and Liam just kind of looked like they belonged together already.

I cried a lot at the book. Didn't shed a tear at the movie. Sure, it was sad, but I thought the book was a LOT sadder. My advice to anyone wanting to see this is to not waste your time and just read the book instead.