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 Hilary Duff plays the Scotiabank in Ottawa on Wednesday Sept 5, 2007 .(Sean Kilpatrick/SUN) |
Ottawa, and the rest of the world for that matter, just can't get enough of that teen queen Hilary Duff.
The 19-year-old entertainer has released four albums over the past four years, including her latest collection of derivative dance numbers and ballads called Dignity. As if that wasn't enough, she's also done a couple of movies, designed her own line of tween wear and launched her own fragrance, "Stuff."
Even with all that on her plate, Duff made time to walk through something that looked like a concert at Scotiabank Place last night.
Talking about dignity, there wasn't much of it in this brazen parade of marketing-based entertainment. And much like her last visit in 2006, Duff worked the screaming bubblegummers and their parents over ruthlessly with a tightly choreographed but hopelessly robotic show.
It opened with a truly deafening wail from 4,200 hormonally discharging teenaged girls as Duff dove into Playing With Fire, Danger and that theme song for dozens of acne cream ads, Come Clean.
And when she leaned back, closed her eyes and belted that one out, it actually looked like she was singing.
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Then, backed by a band of cute guys, Duff looked like she needed a barstool to get through the wrenching emotions of Someone Watching Over Me, but recovered quickly enough to change her clothes and the mood 180 degrees for the Beat of My Heart and a bouncing cover of The Go-Go's hit Our Lips Are Sealed that was the best part of the show, and the most spontaneous.
Duff's stage show looked like a musical version of the teen TV drama Degrassi High, with a team of sexy dancers-slash-models wearing what looked like Hil's new fall line of streetwear as a storyline of a girl having an argument, then making up and dancing with her boyfriend played out.
All the while Duff, wearing lots of glitter and showing off her fabulous legs, kept smoothing things over with lots of synthesizer dance music and dispensing bits of girlfriendly advice.
"No matter where you go, you always meet people, boys or girls, who will criticize you, who are negative. This next song, Wake Up, is about not listening to them, but living your life ..."
Yikes, it was as if she was reading my mind. But c'mon Hilary, can't you come up with anything better than that?
Even the concert's best moments, such as her driving cover of Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield, seemed lost on the audience.
Perhaps it was just a case of having had enough of the same old Duff.