This may come as a shock, but it isn’t until a good quarter of the way through her new MTV documentary that Miley Cyrus sticks her tongue out. And twerking? Barely a passing mention.
Someone at MTV deserves a serious raise for foreseeing the distant gold in the reinvention of Miley Cyrus, the “Hannah Montana” tween star who shocked the pearl-clutching world last month with a foam finger, a slew of teddy bears and a heaping portion of sex in an instantly infamous performance at the Video Music Awards.
For its surprisingly kinetic one-hour documentary, “Miley: The Movement” — premiering Wednesday at 10 p.m. — MTV followed Cyrus for four months, from the early summer debut of Miley 2.0 with her urban single “We Can’t Stop” through her naked-but-for-the-boots music video for the chart-topping “Wrecking Ball.”
The titular “movement” is what Miley calls her transformation from wholesome Disney entertainer to a 20-year-old doing whatever-the-hell she wants.
“People always want to call it a transition . . . It’s not a transition,” she says forcefully in the doc. “It’s a movement. It’s a growth. It’s a change.”
Self-aggrandizing aside, there’s no debating that this is a Cyrus we haven’t seen before. Beneath the casual appropriation of black culture is a hard-working young woman who, frankly, knows exactly what she’s doing.
“You can watch that performance and think that’s a hot mess,” she says of the VMAs, a few days after. “But it’s a strategic hot mess.”
In one scene, the robot commonly known as Britney Spears pops by for a (likely contractually obligated) recording session with Cyrus for a feature on Miley’s new album (the two now share a manager, Larry Rudolph).
After speak-singing lyrics like “Cat walk, slick talk” into the mic, Robotney offers an awkward, “Thank you for having me on your song.”
It’s all a heavy-handed, albeit fair, set-up to position Cyrus’ shock and hype as the modern-day deflowering of Ms. Spears with now comparably tame acts — such as kissing Madonna on stage or shaking her butt in a nude body suit.
“When the ‘Slave 4 U’ video came out, my dad was like, ‘My 8-year-old’s going to be a stripper!’ ” Cyrus enthusiastically tells Spears, who hilariously doesn’t appear pre-programmed for any sort of human response.
With that in mind, everything Cyrus does starts to seem at least a little less grating. Can we really blame her for wanting to make a name for herself? Moments like her vacuuming on a jet plane (“Gotta keep it humble!”) and purposely over-dramatizing ailments (“My neck, I can’t move it, and I feel like now I’m losing my vision”) show a level-headed girl with a refreshing sense of humor in the often too-serious world of pop music.
“If I wanted to do a raunchy sex show, I wouldn’t have been dressed as a damn bear!” she exclaims. Fair point.
There is a glaring omission in “The Movement,” though — no mention of Liam Hemsworth, the “Hunger Games” hunk Cyrus was engaged to during most of the doc filming (they’re now split up).
Also nowhere to be seen — her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, who has a history of disapproving of his daughter’s antics. MTV wouldn’t comment on the exclusions, but Miley was a “partner” in making the film.
In other words, we’re seeing exactly what she wants us to see. This is, after all, essentially a very tantalizing extended commercial for her album, “Bangerz,” which drops next week.
In other words: we’ve fallen for it again.