'Raise Your Voice' bows down in mediocrity

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

RAISE YOUR VOICE (PG) One-and-a-Half Stars (Poor-to-Fair) A bland tale of a small-town girl at a big-city music conservatory. Hilary Duff stars in what seems like a pilot for a West Coast clone of "Fame." TV veteran Sean McNamara directs. New Line, 103 minutes.

The setting, a high school summer program at a Los Angeles music conservatory, suggests a West Coast variation of "Fame" but with little of the edge or energy found in that '80s film or spin-off TV series.

Duff stars as Terri, a Flagstaff, Ariz., teen who loves to sing — and who gets accepted at a prestigious summer music program in L.A. She's been encouraged by her loving brother (Jason Ritter, son of the late John Ritter) but is crushed when the young man is killed in an auto accident. The boy's death only reinforces the reluctance of her stern, overly protective father (a toothpick-chewing David Keith) to let Terri travel far from home.

Thus, Terri sets up an elaborate deception — telling Dad that she's spending the summer with her aunt (Rebecca De Mornay) in Southern California. Instead, Terri's at the camp. (The lie is implausible in its execution — and never sufficiently justified or punished. In fact, it's rewarded; hardly an outcome a parent wants to see.)

Once there, the film settles into just another, rather bland episode of "Fame." Terri is the simple, small-town girl, trying to survive among a bunch of ambitious city kids. Of course, her purity of heart and supposedly great singing eventually wins everyone over. The plot builds to the all-important, end-of-summer show, at which the kids compete for a scholarship. And it might seem more dramatic if Duff actually had a strong, music-conservatory voice. Instead, she's a light, airy, inoffensive but unimpressive vocalist.

All in all, the film seems utterly familiar, sappy and superficial, a voice barely raised to a whisper. Where's Jack Black to rev up the volume and the laughs when you need a real high school music teacher?

Rated PG, language.