If anyone had told me that Peter Chelsom, the British director of intriguingly oddball movies such as Hear My Song and Funny Bones, would be put in command of this highly profitable Disney franchise, I would scarcely have credited it.
 
But though I can’t actually claim that his take on Hannah Montana is anything more than a basinful of easy entertainment for younger teens, it does what it sets out to do with commendable fluency and zeal.

You will know, if you’ve followed this pop-culture phenomenon, that Hannah Montana, teenage singing idol, is really Miley (Miley Cyrus), a country girl trying to juggle school, friends and her secret pop-star fame. And when the film opens, she is not doing it very well, for she is totally hooked on her LA celebrity lifestyle.

When her dad (Billy Ray Cyrus) takes her home to Crowley Corners, Tennessee, she has to throw off her blonde wig and be a normal girl again. Granny tells her to behave, dad gives nothing away and a handsome young man who is good with horses thinks she’s a ripping gal.

But you know what will eventually happen and that, in the end, she’ll sing like a bird for everyone. This transpires at an improvised concert, where the celebrity Hannah is invited to warble in order to save the local meadows from greedy developers. Miley is forced to put on the blonde wig again and do her stuff for the betterment of the community — and thus she realises what’s what in her life after all.

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Naturally, the whole thing is entirely predictable and totally without any pretensions to depth. But Chelsom plays it all as a family film in the old Disney tradition and the sweetly pug-faced Miley Cyrus goes to it with what one can only describe as a furious will. It amounts to a box-office attraction to rival Chelsom’s international hit, Shall We Dance? The music isn’t exactly Schubert, but what do you expect?