Raise your voice can be cheesy, and lame at times, but its an entertaining film. It has some great musical numbers, and Hilary Duff sounds great. Hilary Duff's performance is very good in this, she has convinced me that she can pull off a serious dramatic role. The characters are very likeable, and I liked a lot of them very much. This is by far Hilary Duff's best film to date, and I hope that her roles in the future can remain mature like this. Rebecca De Mornay is awesome, but underused, I love her! Rita Wilson is really good as Terri Fletcher's (Duff) mother, and the guy that plays her father is really good as well. I really liked Jason Ritters character, and how he believed in his sister, and wanted her to accomplish her dream. It was very sad when his character died, and when Terri is in the hospital bed, with all the machines helping her breath. The ending is not very good, but everything is resolved, and it's a very inspiring movie, and I'm going to buy this on dvd for sure.

Grade: B

I didn't really like it, but Hilary Duff is just adorable. The movie is cheesy, predictible, and badly acted, but I still can't help but like it a tiny bit.

5/10 (C-)

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Raise Your Voice
Rated PG: thematic elements and language
Running Time: 103 minutes


Near the middle of August the theatrical trailer for Raise Your Voice was released on the internet. I didn't care about watching it, but my friend who loves Hilary Duff was interested in it. So I clicked on the link. When the trailer was over, I was very surprised. The trailer definitely exceeded my very low expectations. I decided I'd actually give this a go in theaters. So the movie has been released for two weeks and I still didn't see it. My friend and I decided we'd see this and then sneak into Garden State. I had alright expectations for Raise Your Voice. I expected me to give it about a 7/10 (B) but when I left the theater around 8:40PM, that was not the case
A young teenage girl Terri is great at singing. While she gets absolutely no support from her overprotective father, she gets a lot of support from her mother and her brother. When Terri and her brother sneak out of the house to go to a concert, a drunk driver hits them on the way home. Terri is stuck in the hospital, but her brother died. When she gets out of the hospital she says she's never going to sing again, but a couple days later she gets a letter saying that she's been accepted to the best summer music program in the country. Her father wouldn't let her go, so her mother and her aunt said that she'd be going to her aunt's house in California. While she's there she works on her music skills, and she understands the risks you take in life.
When I saw the trailer to this I was like "awesome! Hilary Duff can actually show off her acting skills!" I always knew she had acting, I just said that she's just never had projects to show she is a good actress. She was absolutely terrible in this! I was rolling my eyes whenever she was trying to "act" and then laughing when she was trying to be funny. She's just terrible, I can't believe that she has no acting skills whatsoever. Maybe, just maybe, and I really hope this is the case, she knew the movie would be awful so she didn't really care, but I highly doubt that's the reason she gives one of the worst performances of the year. I'm just so baffled because she was even alright in the lame A Cinderella Story. I'm just hoping that her next movie she's better, but I doubt she will be, and that's kind of sad because she had great potential.
Oliver James (What A Girl Wants) was awful, just like in WAGW. This was a horrible, horrible performance and I hated his character. Basically, his character was the one shoving morals down your throat. I hate when they do that in movies. Kids can learn lessons from their parents, they don't need movies to teach them because it's not like they listen anyways!!! More then little kids see these movies anyways, and honestly, this wasn't even a kids movie! I just hate this guy, he's really bad. He puts John Ritter to shame.
John Corbett (Raising Helen) was awful too. I never liked him so it's not surprising at all he was awful in this. How this guy got into movies is beyond me, I hate the way he talks. I don't know why, I just hate it. He really gets on my nerves. I hope his career crash and burns fast.
Alright, this was honestly just another teen movie with every cliché in the book. Normally, I don't even care about that, but here the story was so bad I really cared about all the clichés. I'm sure I could have written a better script and I'm not even a good writer. I'm really disappointed with this one. It was really just awful. I don't even know what else to say, other then I'm not seeing it again anytime soon. After all my bashing though, I've got to say it's somewhat bare able. It's more bare able then Team America: World Police, anyways, but that's not saying a lot.

Raise Your Voice - 5/10 (C-)

Raise Your Voice
PG, 103 minutes.

Its Hilary Duff does music academy, simply put. Shes up to her old tricks, aw dad and mom I love you, oh look a boy lets make out then have a misunderstanding then get back together. The difference is yes this movies a lot more dramatic moments, the best scenes in the film for Duff and the film-maker is when the accident happens and such and she wakes up. When the doctor was shining the light in her eye and stuff, that was her personal best. Yes the death of whats seemingly one of the main characters is slightly riveting of course if you're spoiled here well too bad, but I won't lay down the details. After shes in music academy mode though it slips down into Disney tv movie almost. The ending is cliche of course where she battles the hardship but the deserving poor girl wins. Couple parts: I didn't mind the weird mixer-drummer guy(played quirky guy on Quintuplets) getting it on with the weird piano chick, that was a not a totally bad subplot, but it didn't add much to the film either. It just put on more minutes and gave us a quirky montage. One thing about the flick: Theres too much dramatization. Too much background score and crying. She has a misunderstanding with the boyfriend(horrible actor Oliver something) and the film acts like her mom died. She goes absolutely suicidal almost, balling all over, with the score in the back etc. That whole part was redundant. In all alot of the music sequences were well done, alot were dubbed over obviously but it was still her in a pre-recorded studio I'm sure. The movie wasn't totally unenjoyable, another notch on the resume for Hilary. Hilary+Music is good, but the Oliver something actor and his whole situation I give an E(if there is that grade heh). It completley brought it down. Overall score: C+

A solid and underrated film with a good message.

7/10 ( B )