Raise Your Voice

With a perky smile plastered on her baby-doll face, Hilary Duff and her sugar-coated talent star in yet another throwaway tweener flick with its little-fish-big-pond plot and after-school special sentimentalities. When her brother dies in a car crash, the singer-turned-actress packs up and heads to a summer camp for musical whiz kids in Los Angeles. Because her over-the-top Scrooge of a father adamantly disapproves of his little girl venturing into the big, bad city, a convenient cover story of visiting her aunt—the welding artist of the desert—is concocted. With that in place, the goody-two-shoes can perform her breathy lip-synched numbers, meet a starry-eyed British Casanova and make the predictable comeback after the predictable meltdown. Writer Sam Schreiber and director Sean McNamara created this waste of time and money that should get viewers to raise their voices in anger of yet another failed Fame wannabe.