The selling of Hilary Duff continues with Raise Your Voice, a maudlin cheeseball about an aspiring singer with a dead brother. The film is aimed at pre-teen girls. Run for your life.

The prematurely peroxided Miss Duff stars as a hick from hicksville hoping to attend an important music school in the big city of Los Angeles.

Her father (David Keith, all scowly) doesn't want her to go to that wicked city!

Her mother (Rita Wilson, what the hell was she thinking?) is much more supportive!

Her brother (Jason Ritter) is the most supportive, but he dies in a car accident!

Dammit!

Anyway, Duff's character gets accepted to the school.

She gets to go by lying to her stern father and pretending she's actually going to stay with an aunt (Rebecca De Mornay, cleverly cast to show the familial tendency toward peroxide.)

All the other girl students are bitchy and stand-off-ish and highly competitive, so you'll be wanting to take your tween-age daughters to this film for its crucial social messages about honesty and camaraderie.

At the school, there's a guy she likes (Oliver James).

Goodie gum drops.

But does he like her? Dearie me. Etc.

There's a great teacher (John Corbett, obviously being punished for something he did in a past life) who inspires her to keep going, despite her dead brother and her four-note vocal range.

Over a month in Los Angeles, Miss Duff's character solves the financial problems of an African-American student, corrects another classmate's borderline personality disorder, plays cupid for a twitchy nerd, talks about the higher power of music, and pulls her fringe back at the front for a more sober hair look.

It's awesome!

Our favourite scene involves Duff and John Corbett when he gets all mentorish and tells her that artists are different from other people.

They feel things differently, he tells her.

They convey emotion and make an audience feel what they're feeling.

Nausea?

Raise Your Voice is a boring, badly written, cliche-heavy outing with lousy production values, various moral messages unfit for childhood consumption and songs from the known-carcinogen school of pop.

Don't miss it.

(This film is rated PG)

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