We start out with
folks arriving at a drive-in theater as the golden sun is lowering in the sky.
This must be a very special drive-in, because not only is it still standing
when all the others have been torn down, but everyone here is really young and
pretty and thin. Apparently it’s considered socially improper to arrive with
anything more than zero-percent body fat. They probably check your weight at
the ticket gate.
Anyway, Miley
climbs out of her sporty car, making sure that we see her cowboy boots first,
because she’s a country girl and all. (Side note: All of the cars here are sporty
and expensive. It seems they also check your financial history at that special
gate. You might have to arrive early just to fill out all the forms.) She leans
against her car and starts singing, wearing short-shorts no bigger than a stick
of gum. I guess it’s no longer necessary to hide the goods until you meet
someone special.
Eventually Miley
gets bored with the leaning, so she hooks up with a posse of her home girls,
who have been carefully selected to show a rainbow of racial diversity and give
the impression that all are welcome in Miley World. (As long as you’re young
and pretty and thin, natch.) They strut around for a while, as we get shots of
other people getting out of their cars and joining the party. (At no point does
anyone seem interested in actually watching a movie, so maybe things have
changed since the last time I went to a drive-in.)
Wherever the
girls are headed, it takes a while for them to get there, so we get plenty of
shots of Miley’s boots and Miley’s smiles and Miley’s ability to make grown men
stop what they are doing and stare at her. Then Miley snatches up one of the
speakers from those poles and hops into the bed of a pickup truck. (It’s not
her truck, but things like ownership and clothing that serves any real purpose
are clearly not important in this video.) It’s time for Miley and her backup
posers to give an impromptu concert! (I’m sure this won’t interfere with the
movie at all.)
So Miley rocks it for a bit, and of course the
crowd goes wild with adoration, dancing and singing and fist-pumping. (One
gentleman gets so excited that he starts doing gymnastics, a response that
seems to happen quite often in music videos but never in real life. You try
doing a round off into a handspring at a real concert and somebody is going to
cut you. Those people paid good money to see the stage, not your airborne ass.)
Balancing in the
back of a pickup while wearing heels is exhausting, so eventually Miley calls
for an intermission and she decides to go stand in front of a metal wall.
There’s something written on the wall, but it’s hard to concentrate on what it
might say, what with all of Miley’s hair and us worrying about her accidentally
bending over and getting a surprise flossing situation with those shorts. But
Miley is a trooper and she professionally avoids the bending as she continues
with the song. She even does some type of modified two-step moves as added
entertainment value.
We cut to Miley
wandering around the drive-in by herself, the Benetton girls having run off to
do something else for a bit. (Was there a sale at the Ace bandage factory? They
could get four or five outfits out of just one roll of that stuff.) But Miley
doesn’t mind that they have gone AWOL, because she’s still singing and walking
and smiling at everybody, approving of their thinness and prettiness and
supposed richness if they got past the screening process at the gate.
But singing and
walking in the dirt is not as much fun as singing and dancing on a stage, so
Miley convinces someone to unroll a giant American flag over the movie screen
and build her a nice stage just beneath it. (Nobody is ever going to watch a movie in this place, seriously.) This helpful
but unseen person also arranges for an airplane to fly overhead and dump tons of
confetti over the whole shindig, because it’s really not a party unless there
are colored bits of paper in the air.
Miley does an
energetic solo for a bit, with just her and her hair and her microphone that
she clearly adores by the way she fondles it continuously. Oh, and the flag.
You can’t really miss that flag, which is bigger than some of the states on the
Eastern seaboard.
Cut to later that
night, with Miley and more of her carefully-selected friends taking advantage
of the playground equipment at the drive-in. She’s got the primo spot, of
course, standing in a centrally-located swing, but her friends are still
artfully arranged on a nearby jungle gym. Amazingly enough, all the fly girls
and fly boys are able to dance and gyrate with complete abandon without
plummeting to the ground and ending their careers as dancing extras in music
videos.
The Gymnastics
Dude even runs up to perform another one of his hands-free flip things, but
it’s not nearly as impressive since he’s on the ground and not clinging to
metal bars two stories up like his risk-taking dance-class partners. But if he
can pull off that same stunt while on top
of the jungle gym, and survive, I’ll buy the man a corn dog, sure will.
Then we’re back
to the stage, where the American flag has been replaced by a giant video
monitor, because it’s not really a concert unless you have a giant TV that
people can watch instead of the performer. The Benetton girls are back (love
the new look, it’s nice that you were able to share one outfit between the four
of you) and everybody is super thrilled to be partying in the USA. The girls are happy to share with us some
intense choreography that they learned on the way back from the mall, and Miley
is happy to raise her hands over her head as often as possible.
And that’s pretty
much how we wrap things up, with well-toned folks dancing and singing and
proving that they have excellent stamina. Even Gymnastics Dude is still at it,
suddenly running up and doing a flip-roll thing across one of the tables at the
concession stand. (Note to self: Do not
eat at that table.) We end the video with Miley back in front of the American
flag, proud of her music, proud of her country, and proud of her ability to
pick friends that can coordinate with the design theme of any room in your
house…
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