Release Date: October 8, 2004
Starring: Hilary Duff, Oliver James, Lauren Mayhew, Dana Davis, Johnny K. Lewis, Kat Dennings, Rebecca De Mornay, David Keith, John Corbett
Directed by: Sean McNamara
Written by: Sam Schreiber
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
MPAA Rating: PG (thematic elements, language)
It must be frustrating at times to be Hilary Duff. The 17-year-old actress, who has the lead in Raise Your Voice, yet another formulaic, barely-fictional self-discovery movie spruced up with a few pop tunes, has spent the better part of her career to date relentlessly proving with near-scientific irrefutability one of the few truths in the movies: Formulaic, barely-fictional self-discovery movies spruced up with pop tunes will always get bad reviews.
While Duff probably does not spend a lot of time thinking about this -- it’s just as irrefutable that she’s more concerned with playing to her teenaged fan base than film critics -- it must eat at her just a little. Lindsay Lohan, another teenage pop princess with whom Duff is often linked, stars in substantially livelier and more intelligent teen movies, like Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Mean Girls. These films have drawn raves from critics principally because they make light of the genre’s lack of credibility with anyone over the age of 20. Duff, on the other hand, has shown no such interest in breaking any molds.
Raise Your Voice, which was directed by Sean McNamara from a script by Sam Schreiber, is the latest piece of evidence in this discouraging trend. It has Duff as Terri Fletcher, a Flagstaff, Arizona, teenager who has dreams of enrolling in a selective Los Angeles music academy to hone her already outstanding vocal talents. Her dad (David Keith), who is a regular killjoy, says no, but with the help of an encouraging aunt (Rebecca De Mornay) and more than a little deception, she works her way around his objections and into the school.
Once there, she finds the Los Angeles music scene substantially more competitive than she had imagined. The city kids, led by mean girl Robin (Lauren Mayhew), are elitists; the teachers are demanding (though John Corbett has a small part as an encouraging voice coach); and her roommate, Denise (Dana Davis, as the movie’s obligatory, no-nonsense supporting minority), doesn’t want to be her friend because she has to concentrate on winning the school’s annual scholarship prize.
Predictably, Terri slays them all with kindness, though her version has a healthy serving of small-town naïveté. She also falls in love with a cute guitarist named Jay (Oliver James), and helps in setting up a romance between Jay’s friend Kiwi (Johnny K. Lewis) and a scowling piano player named Sloane (Kat Dennings).
Of course, no one should reasonably expect much in the way of story from a Duff vehicle; any such movie is bound to play out like a soap opera recalibrated to the vanilla after-school standards of the movie’s youngish target audience. But even the right cast can sell material like this. The ballet melodrama Center Stage, which had many of the same plot elements as Raise Your Voice, went over much better because its cast played up the romantic intrigue and professional rivalries with pulpy, energetic abandon.
By comparison, the cast of Raise Your Voice seems lifeless, as though everyone knows that they’re confined to the inevitabilities of their characters. Terri’s crush on Jay predictably lands her in trouble with Robin, who used to date Jay and resents Terri’s encroachment on her spotlight. Terri, who is good at writing lyrics, and Jay, who has a knack for musical arrangements, predictably team up to create a ready-made pop single for the movie’s final act. And Terri, who has lied to her father for arguably wholesome reasons, predictably comes to an understanding with him in the wake of her rockin’ performance with Jay on the last day of school.
But basic plot devices like these, combined with the cosmopolitan appearance of Terri’s music school -- it’s a “Real World”-like house, where students take classes and live in dorm rooms in the same building, or in other words, only the coolest thing ever to someone who's not old enough to drive -- should be enough to satisfy the movie’s undemanding target audience. Raise Your Voice is also an improvement over Duff’s previous movie, A Cinderella Story, because at least this film makes its attempts at emotional sincerity without the shorthand framework of the modern fairy tale.
Then again, it would’ve been pretty difficult for Duff to do worse than A Cinderella Story, and there’s no denying that the actress is in a rut. One possible explanation is that she is actually not a very good actress -- she basically oscillates between a luminous, high-watt smile and an angry/sad, scrunched-up pout. This may not matter much while she’s playing in coming-of-age films to audiences full of fans, but one day she will come of age for real, and, as Katie Holmes has begun to find out, being a good actress will suddenly become very important.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)