Raise Your Voice
Sypnosis:
Terri Fletcher (Hilary Duff) is your typical sweet-hearted, small-town girl and she always obeys her intensely overprotective dad (David Keith), but when she gets accepted to a summer program at a prestigious LA music school and he forbids her to go, she realizes it's time to break away. With the help of her cool aunt (Rebecca De Mornay), Terri figures out a ruse to sneak off to LA and seize the chance to actualize her musical dreams. Once there, it's harsh wake-up time however, as she realizes being naive, adorable, blonde, un-pierced, and un-tattooed means being ostracized in this too-cool musical community. Luckily John Corbett, a sympathetic music teacher, is there to help, and there's time for romance to bloom with a British classmate (Oliver James). Before this little star can truly blossom though, she still has to cope with the trauma of losing her brother in a car accident (it's left her terrified of bright lights, a real problem for a stage performer) and then there's the matter of telling the truth to her furious father. Don't worry too much though, for Duff's effortless charisma lifts this sturdy, comfortably worn-in vehicle easily over the bumpier clichés, and delivers it safely to its inspiring destination. DeMornay is also good as the aunt, who shares Terri's incredibly blonde hair gene.
Starring:
-Hilary Duff
- Oliver James
-Jason Ritter
-John Corbett
-Rebecca De Mornay
-David Keith
-Rita Wilson
Reviews:
Hollywood never fails to surprise, particularly when it comes to lowering expectations for their audience's intelligence (or lack thereof). Take Raise Your Voice, the most recent in a seemingly indefatigable string of mind-numbing teen-oriented pics, for but the latest example; starring Hilary Duff, a reliable earner for key prepubescent demographics, the film is an elegiac homage to fraternal love about a girl who gives up singing after her brother bites it in a car crash.
What transpires instead of a purported exploration of loss and mourning for the Clearasil set is a music video featuring a misbegotten lot of punk rockers playing back-up for a bubblegum pop outfit whose street cred wouldn't land them a back-up gig for the folks on Sesame Street. Oh yeah, and then there's the plot – a jumbled mass of melodrama and post-Fame platitudes about living your dreams and following your heart (and abandoning all logic) – whose outcome shouldn't surprise any person with an IQ above double digits. But then again, it would seem that these are the selfsame simple folk at whom Raise Your Voice is precisely aimed.
Suffice it to say, the film is not good.
Duff plays Terri Fletcher, a midwestern girl with a passable singing voice and a creepily attentive brother named Paul (Jason Ritter) who persuades her – after school, in her room, in the bathroom – that she should apply to attend a summer music program in Los Angeles. On the day of his graduation, Terri convinces Paul to steal out of the house against the wishes of their inexplicably stern father Simon (David Keith) and go to a mall-punk concert. While on their way home, unfortunately, an oncoming car runs a red light and Paul is killed, and Terri discovers that she no longer has the joie de vivre she once did when her brother was around cheering her on, following her, videotaping her and doing all manners of oddly obsessive behavior.
Amidst the tragedy, Terri finally receives some good if unexpected news: her brother's love letter-cum-audition tape to the prestigious Bristol-Hillman Conservatory was accepted, and the fledgling Britney clone finds herself with the rare opportunity to study – for free, natch – with the best and brightest musicians in the country. Against her father's wishes, Terri conspires with her mom (Rita Wilson) and aunt Nina (Rebecca De Mornay) to attend the school and nurture her emerging talent and see if she has what it takes to be a professional singer.
Oliver James and Hilary Duff in Raise Your Voice
With the help of an unconventional teacher (what other kind is there?) named Mr. Torvald (John Corbett) and a skunk-haired guitarist named Jay (Oliver James), Terri soon discovers that in order to properly raise her voice, she must move past the tragic loss of her brother and put her efforts into where her talent truly lies – crafting forgettable pop tunes and snogging dreamy teenage boys.
Having never seen another Hilary Duff movie, I can honestly say I have nothing against the young actress-singer, but Raise Your Voice has done little to inure goodwill to the potential of her future projects. It is a shamelessly trite, banal film, devoid of any originality or inspiration, and evaporates interest from its audience the further they fall into its narrative. Paul's death is executed with the ham-fisted, weepy folding of clothing in a lost son/brother's bedroom, but Terri's loss is actor Jason Ritter's gain: the son of the late John Ritter has bigger and better things to do with his career than suffer as the quasi-incestuous sibling of Hilary Duff.
But then again, not much of this appears to be Duff's fault, save picking the project itself; the after-school special rhythms of the plot are measured out in four-four time to make sure that even the most facile viewer can follow, and the conflicts are older than storytelling itself. Is anyone still susceptible to a convergence of coincidence where the heroine walks in on her would-be boyfriend making out with another girl (and the established villain, to boot), only to later discover that there was a perfectly logical explanation for everything? Duff has to declare fealty to the material and provide the appropriate doses of shock and horror; we suffer through the revulsion of watching her kiss and make up later on.
The school, as mentioned before, is populated with an inordinate number of oddballs, weirdos and tattooed folk, suggesting that in order to graduate to a proper music career one must suffer the indignities of being an outcast, even if a more communal feel one won't find at any conservatory outside the four walls of this film. On more than one occasion, the entire cast is called upon for impromptu jam sessions where extras are at long last given their time to shine, and prove that those purplish hues running down their necks and forearms are but an outward expression of the pain they express when they play their triangles, dulcimer or zither.
Disappointingly, for all of the filmmakers' concession to convention, which includes a sassy black roommate and an endgame confrontation with Terri's father, Raise Your Voice leaves entirely too many familiar questions unanswered. Where is the evil girl's comeuppance? What kind of end-of-term competition would pit classical piano against fusion violin and modern pop-rock for a single scholarship, especially when the performers often appear in groups? How can a girl of emerging talent already be capable of the seemingly impossible task – for any singer – of harmonizing with herself?
posted by ♥ Christie at
22:49
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