Likable Miley gets down on the farm in "Hannah Montana: The Movie"

God help me, I now have a tune called "Hoedown Throwdown" in my head, and yes, the thing is wickedly catchy. This is what will happen if you go to "Hannah Montana: The Movie," an outgrowth of the popular Disney Channel show. In it, Miley Cyrus plays a girl who leads a double life as a wildly famous pop star named Hannah Montana and just-a- regular-teenager named Miley Stewart, who lives with her widowed father (Billy Ray Cyrus, who spends most of the movie looking mellowly exasperated) and goes to high school in L.A. Nobody at school — except her closest friends — knows of her secret, because Hannah wears a blond wig and Miley is a brunette.

This entirely plausible situation (what, there's no Internet in L.A.?) is interrupted when Miley's dad decides that she's getting a little bratty and hustles her back to her roots: namely, Crowley Corners, Tenn. They are pursued by a reporter for a "notorious tabloid," who's trying to uncover Hannah's dark secret, but really there's not much plot here. Miley/Hannah sings to the chickens, tries to charm a cute country boy (Lucas Till), experiences difficulties maintaining her dual identity with the home folks, throws her hair around in slo-mo, gets upstaged by a ferret and learns some important Life Lessons. Oh, and she sings a lot, and an ostrich named Tammy Wynette shows up, for no particular reason.

Much of this is pretty cute, and certainly the tween girls at the preview screening seemed to be eating it up, swaying along with the concert scenes. (A small girl in front of me was wearing the exact same Hannah Montana T-shirt worn by a small girl in the movie, which was a bit surreal.) And though the movie raised all sorts of probing questions (Why does no one at school recognize Hannah as Miley? How does Miley find time to do any homework, what with the enormous time-suck that leading a double life must be? Why is that ostrich named Tammy Wynette, anyway?) — hey, it's not aimed at me.

"Hannah Montana: The Movie" is an excuse for some generically catchy songs and a showcase for Miley Cyrus' charmingly chipmunk-cheeked smile; and on that level, it works well enough. But, speaking as someone who can still hum the incredibly ear-burning theme song from "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" (which came out, I shudder to recall, in 2003), let me warn the grown-ups: Beware the bubblegum; it sticks.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com