So Undercover (2012)

(On Cable TV, June 2013) Now that Miley Cyrus has transformed herself from a Disney icon to a blonde badly-coiffed strumpet [September 2013: …who twerks a lot, advocates drugs and has chosen the easy over-sexualisation route to fame], her intermediate star-vehicle So Undercover looks increasingly out-of-place.  It stars Cyrus as a tough Private Investigator who’s asked to go undercover at a college sorority in order to protect a potential assassination target and identify a criminal.  Or something like that, because by the middle of the third act it’s obvious that plot is about the last thing the screenwriters cared about: So Undercover is really about the usual fish-out-of-water jokes when a less-than-feminine protagonist is plunged in the vapid back-stabbing world of a stereotypical sorority.  The script may not be all that good (it peaks at “your balls are amazing.”) but Cyrus actually does quite well in the lead role: it’s not a transcendent performance, but she’s fairly amusing and the long auburn hair is now like a glimpse at an alternate more respectable career path for her.  Still, let’s not fool ourselves: the film exist as a big casting stunt (seeing Cyrus share scenes with Kelly Osbourne as her roommate is a bit of stunt-casting nerdvana) and there’s preciously little here to distinguish So Undercover from so many other undistinguished college comedies aimed at high-schoolers.