dir. Sean McNamara
The tone of Raise Your Voice is set pretty quickly – Terri (Hilary Duff) and a bunch of others are looking deliriously happy while singing an unimpressive song. There is an unintentionally darker detour for a bit, involving Terri’s brother who seems so obsessed with her that it goes way beyond the realms of brotherly love, but this incestuous subtext is put to an abrupt end when the brother dies in a car crash. This trauma hangs over Terri as she decides to enrol in a music programme which could afford her a scholarship. The film goes swiftly back to its peppy vibes, but the seeds of a third-act conflict are sewn in a very contrived set-up where Terri and her mother lie to the father, claiming Terri is staying with her aunt instead. This is because the father is desperate for Terri to stay home and run his family restaurant instead, presumably for the rest of her life. None of this is particular compelling, and neither are the cast of clichéd characters at the music programme: the sassy black roommate, the spiky-haired love interest, the moody dark-haired girl, the all-knowing inspirational teacher. As a bonus, they also throw in an utterly obnoxious incel boy whose method of ensnaring the girl he likes involves being as loud and intrusive as possible (spoiler alert: it works). It doesn’t help that there seems to be no real knowledge of music, either, with many students learning painfully easy pieces and demonstrating limited talent, Terri’s underwhelming vocals (both before and after accepting the death of her brother) being the prime example. There’s kind of a religious theme, but even that is lazily dotted around here and there. From the story to the characters to the emotions, Raise Your Voice is predictably one-note.
BMDb 