Hannah Montana: The Movie
You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home.
It’s been almost two months, but we are so back! I knew I wanted to return right in time for my Summer series because it’s my favorite time of year on Movie Mondays, and I didn’t want to miss it. As this newsletter is going out, I’m vacationing in Tennessee. I wanted to do something that fits into the country theme but is also appropriate for summer. Hannah Montana: The Movie is set in the fictional Crowley Corners, a small town in Tennessee where Miley Stewart is from.
It’s not an official summer movie since it came out in April, and the timeline is a little confusing, but since the film spans two weeks, Summer seems like the only time a high school student could be away from home that long. Hannah Montana: The Movie also features incredible music like “The Climb,” Billy Ray’s “Back To Tennessee,” and “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home,” a song so great that only Taylor Swift could have written it.
Miley Stewart Summer
Around 2021, my TikTok for you page became inundated with edits to the Hannah Montana: The Movie songs “Don’t Walk Away” and “D.R.E.A.M.” with the text overlay “Miley Stewart Summer.” The video clips featured girls in small towns, on the farm, and running through fields with their animals, basically what Miley did on her two-week vacation in Hannah Montana: The Movie. Miley Stewart summer became very appealing in the early 2020s, because during the pandemic, we were naturally in a more relaxed state, and even when certain people were trying to force the world back to normal, a lot of us realized that normal wasn’t worth going back to.
In Hannah Montana: The Movie, Miley steps away from busy Los Angeles and her pop star alter ego to reconnect with nature, her family, and her animals. In the film, Miley has a white horse named Blue Jeans, and he’s one of the first characters she meets again who seems to ground her and pull her back to her roots. Miley’s summer is soft, laid back, and stress-free. It’s the opposite of hustle culture. It’s been five years since the pandemic officially began, but there are still a good number of people who don’t want to go back to the world we lived in before.
Soft girls aesthetics and the “trad wife” trend have taken over, and while both have received understandable backlash, I do think it says a lot about how exhausted people are of modern-day society. One of my favorite scenes is early in the film when Miley first gets to Tennessee. She sees Blue Jeans, and as an instrumental of “Butterfly Fly Away” plays, her childhood friend, Travis, rides by on his horse to wrangle in Blue Jeans after he runs away from Miley. There are a few weird jump cuts, but otherwise, I find the directing impressive, and it really lays the foundation for what Miley’s journey is going to be. It also reminds us that there can still be beauty in films that aren’t necessarily taken seriously in the film world.
“You Make Me Crazier”
It wouldn’t be a true Disney film without at least one romance, but Hannah Montana: The Movie gives us two. Both Miley and Robby Ray find love in the film; Miley with Travis and Robby Ray with a local woman named Lorelai. What’s beautiful about both is that they help each character find their way back home again. It's established in the show that Miley lost her mother when she was young, and Robby had to raise her and her brother on his own, making it difficult for him to date. This is one of the main conflicts for Robby and Lorelai, especially because on top of that, he has to hide Miley’s secret pop star identity from the world.
Robby Ray might have set out to help his daughter find herself again after LA turned her into an ego-maniac, but his main journey is to open himself up and nurture his own need for love, instead of only ever prioritizing his children. It’s actually a quite complex side plot for a children’s movie, which is part of why I respect Hannah Montana: The Movie so much. On the other hand, Travis is the one to put Miley in her place and let her know she’s not in LA anymore. Her behavior throughout the film proves she’s completely lost herself in her Hannah Montana persona. She acts like an entitled brat and thinks she’s better than all the people who raised her. However, Travis has a chip on his shoulder at first, which I don’t find particularly appealing.
Ultimately, it’s exactly what Miley needs to remind herself that she would be nothing without the people in Crowley Corners who made her who she is. The moment both romances officially blossom is during my personal favorite performance in the film. An 18-year-old Taylor Swift steps on stage to perform her song “Crazier,” which she reportedly wrote at only 13 years old. Keep in mind, Fearless hadn’t even been released yet when Hannah Montana: The Movie was being filmed; that’s how young Taylor was here. The song is about releasing your inhibitions because the person you love allows you to. As Taylor sings, “I was trying to fly but I couldn’t find wings, ‘til you came along and you changed everything.” It’s the perfect song for both love stories.
You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home
In 2008, Taylor Swift sat down with Boys Like Girls lead singer Martin Johnson to write one of the best songs in any live-action Disney movie and probably my favorite song from Hannah Montana’s entire catalog, "You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home." No song could better encapsulate the message of Hannah Montana: The Movie. Miley and her family visit Tennessee for her grandmother’s birthday, which she has little care about because she’s more preoccupied with the music awards in New York. She’s completely ungrounded, and while the rest of the town is worried about a developer coming in to build a shopping mall in their small town, Miley initially seems to think it’s a good idea.
“Life’s a climb, but the view is great,”-Travis Brody, Hannah Montana: The Movie
Living in LA, she has lost all sense of community. However, there are so many moments in the film that remind Miley and us viewers that this is where she came from, and she can never escape it. I love the moments when everyone is gathered at her grandmother’s house playing music in the living room or on the porch. It’s clear this is where Miley got her love for music from. She might think she’s better than everyone else because she’s Hannah Montana, but she wouldn’t be a singer if she hadn’t been raised by such a musically inclined family.
I can’t write about Hannah Montana: The Movie without bringing up one of the biggest songs and dances of 2009; it was our generation's “Cotton Eye Joe.” At a fundraiser to prevent their land from being turned into a shopping mall, Miley shows significant improvement when she gets the whole party dancing to the “Hoedown Throwdown.” I still remember how fun it was to see this live when I went to Miley Cyrus’ 2009 Wonder World Tour. But in the film, this was the moment Miley lets go of her resentment that she’s in Tennessee and not at the Music Awards and actually enjoys herself. It’s when she realizes the importance of community and the authentic country girl inside the LA snob comes back out.
However, no matter how much she reconnects with her childhood and her family, Miley still has the passion to be a pop star. In the end, she almost gives it all up, and the fact that she is willing to do that is what really matters. It shows how much more integrity she has now and how sorry she is for all the people she hurt along the way by letting all the fame get to her head. Miley performs “The Climb” as herself, and while Miley Cyrus didn’t actually write the song, in the film, Miley Stewart did. It represents how she’s finally written something from the heart that has depth. Earlier in the film, when she’s writing it, Travis critiques the original lyrics, saying the song doesn’t say anything about who Miley is as a person.
But at the end of the film, Miley’s able to create something that really means something because she’s been around people who mean something to her. Miley Cyrus still performs “The Climb” live to this day–She sang it most recently in late May at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. To me, it is the most Miley song and truly expresses her life and career journey. I also heard it live at her Wonder World tour, and since I graduated 6th grade in 2009, it was our grade’s graduation song. In Hannah Montana: The Movie, after “The Climb,” with encouragement from Crowley Corners residents, Miley decides to keep being Hannah. What I like is that the film, which ends with “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home,” reminds us of the importance of balance.
It’s okay to venture away from home, explore the world, and live up to your fullest potential, which isn’t always possible if you’re from a small town. But it’s also important to remember where you came from and not let all the success get to your head: “You can learn to fly and you can chase your dreams, you can laugh and cry, but everybody knows, you’ll always find your way back home.” It’s been over 15 years since Hannah Montana: The Movie premiered, but the legacy of the film and the Disney Channel show live on. Just like Miley Stewart tried to escape her Crowley Corners past, Miley Cyrus spent years trying to escape her Hannah Montana persona. Anyone who was present during the Bangerz era would remember this best.
However, in recent years, she’s found a new appreciation for it, and she’s no longer running from the thing that made her who she is. After all, so much of Miley Stewart was actually just coming from within Miley Cyrus. Around the same time Taylor Swift announced she now owns all of her music, Miley revealed in a podcast that for years she couldn’t legally perform her Hannah Montana songs, but that changed when she became a Disney Legend. Miley was inducted in August 2024, with a tribute performance from Lainey Wilson, who started her career as a Hannah Montana impersonator for children’s birthday parties. The announcement felt like a full-circle moment, and just like Miley Stewart in the film, Miley Cyrus found her way back home again.
“Butterfly Fly Away” will always be my favorite track from this movie and album. I have a fond memory of quoting it during my final/farewell editorial for my high school newspaper. It captured so much of my feelings at the time and still gives me warm and fuzzies