Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Disney 3D

Clearly, we were expecting too much.

Fifteen lousy bucks for "Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert 3-D" and you still learn nothing about sucrose-charged sprite Cyrus and her rock-star alter ego.

You get no sense of her life as the daughter of country entertainer Billy Ray Cyrus ("Achy Breaky Heart"), how she got her role on the Disney Channel series on which this concert was based, how she handles the rigors of a Disney life, how she rehearses or improves on the songs of committee-level competence that make this short movie seem endless, endless, endless.

Oh, but wait. It's in 3-D, a gimmick truly on the cutting edge in . . . 1953. (I was waiting for Vincent Price to duet with Miley Cyrus. No luck.)

The technology gives you the joy, if you are 12 and not a critic, of being totally assaulted with an overcompensating sound system and the sensation of being amid a sea of prepubescent hands and their squealing owners. One stagehand rightly likens it to standing near a jet at takeoff.

You get Cyrus's long blond mane whisking your face, and her tongue sticking out many times, as if to emphasize that she just took you for $15. Little brat. And her drummer sure likes to twirl his sticks. They nearly poke you in the eye at times.

After 10 minutes, you start wishing that would happen.

-- Adam Bernstein (Feb. 2, 2008)

Contains nothing objectionable.