“Sing your life,” mope-rocker Morrissey once belted out in his tune of that name. “All the things that you love, all the things that you loathe.” The same words could very well come out of the mouth of Hilary Duff’s character in her new movie, Raise Your Voice. They could also emanate from the audience, who will no doubt find some things to appreciate in Ms. Duff’s first true attempt at growing up, but just as much of the same old lazy formula. In short, this is the best film yet by the ‘tween princess', but that still isn’t saying very much.
In fact, the lasting legacy of Raise Your Voice may instead be the steering of a whole new army of youngsters towards real-life music school. Indeed, Berklee, VanderCook and others will want to prepare themselves for Hilary’s fan base when they turn eighteen, as this film may do for their enrollment what Top Gun did for the military. This is a film that empowers the young viewer, one that gives them a taste of the independence that awaits, as well as the artistic success that many like to think they have. Duff’s big song in the film has her repeating the line “I won’t give up” and, for better or worse, neither will they.
This is probably one of the best omens for the film’s success, that it gives power to a young person that no princess movie ever could. This time around Duff is Terri Fletcher, a buoyant Texan high-schooler with big dreams and a genuinely touching friendship with her older brother Paul (Jason Ritter). When tragedy strikes, her life is thrown into a downward spiral that has her withdrawing, both socially and spiritually. When she receives a letter of acceptance from an exclusive summer music program in Los Angeles, it’s exactly what she needs; but she knows her stubborn father (David Keith) would never let her go.
With the support of her trusting mother (Rita Wilson), Terri sneaks off on a Greyhound bus and enters a new, adult world. She is an outcast at the performing arts summer program where she will study, a blonde princess in a sea of experimental musicians with spiky hair that runs every color of the rainbow.
In L.A., our heroine quickly falls in with Jay (Oliver James), a hip Brit with a history of romancing fresh-faced female students. With her friends Sloane (Kat Dennings), Kiwi (Johnny K. Lewis) and Denise (Dana Davis) by her side, and Jay’s ex-girlfriend Robin (Lauren C. Mayhew) looking to get in their way, the students begin competition for a scholarship that could make Terri’s dreams come true.
Duff dealt with death before in A Cinderella Story, but it wasn’t as vividly portrayed as it is here. She’s fallen in love in any number of movies, but this is the first time she’s been faced with accompanying issues of alcoholic indulgence and learning to trust.
The actress has released several pop albums and toured around the world supporting them, but has never presented herself as a genuine vocalist trying to harness an ability to reach difficult notes and nuances of singing. The sixteen-year-old actress is growing up, and she seems to appreciate the fact that her audience is ready to up the ante alongside her.
As refreshing as it may be to see Duff shed some tears, drop the “like” from every other sentence and actually lose herself in a character to the degree that she (gasp!) wears shirts that don’t show off her midriff, Raise Your Voice is more a baby step than a giant leap forward. Many of the old standbys are employed here once again, from the cheesy musical montages (one hilariously involving a mime with sparklers) to Duff once again helping a minority whose problem is bigger than hers, to the slapstick-y pratfalls and collisions with open gym lockers.
Director Sean McNamara (a TV director who gave Duff her big break in ’98 with Casper Meets Wendy) utilizes a style much like the film’s script: refreshingly daring one minute, stale and predictable the next. It shows great restraint, for instance, when he shows Los Angeles without ever going to the clichéd shots of the Hollywood sign and Rodeo Drive. Just when you begin to admire his style, however, he’ll start up another musical number that has considerate students running in to join the jam, carrying instruments that can’t even be heard on the soundtrack. You half-expect a kid with a zither to jump in and start grooving with Hilary on one of her pop numbers.
The acting is also somewhat scattershot. John Corbett, as a hip music teacher who wears leather pants and throws his violin to the ground a la Pete Townsend, is charming and perfectly cast. James Avery, as the music school’s principal, seems confused and you can’t blame him – his talents are wasted in two measly scenes that bookend fifty minutes in which you forget he’s in the movie.
Rita Wilson has enough tender moments to show that she deserves to be known as more than just Mrs. Tom Hanks, but Keith David looks so agonizingly uncomfortable that you want to offer him the phone number of a good proctologist. Dennings and Lewis make warm impressions on the viewer, but James often seems like he’s just making things up as he goes along rather than trying to lay the necessary framework in crafting a character.
Some of the messages in Raise Your Voice may cause concern among parents – that a girl can change a ‘player’ and turn him into a loyal boyfriend, that sneaking around behind your parents’ backs is an alternative to a difficult confrontation, and perhaps most disturbingly, that putting a toothpick in a character’s mouth is a viable substitute for giving them a personality. Nevertheless, the girl once known as Lizzie McGuire should be applauded for taking a step forward and presenting an adult story that may inspire ‘tweens to consider a musical education of their own. There’s plenty to love here, and just as much to loathe.
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