Review of Raise Your Voice

Introduction

Hilary Duff plays Terri, a talented singer from a small town who secretly wishes for her big break. Both her and her brother Paul realize they have grown too big for their hometown, but with Paul on the verge of moving out, he is tragically killed in a motor accident.

Terri spends rehabilitation distraught over her brother`s death, and refuses to find the courage to try to break into music by accepting an offer made to her to study at a prestigious school in Los Angeles.

However, with the coaxing of her mother and aunt, she resolves to try her luck in LA, and soon finds herself facing far more intimidating situations and competition in the city than she ever thought she could handle.

Video

The picture quality is strong, with a high level of detail and good colour balance and tone. As expected from a recent movie, there are no signs of print damage on screen.

Audio

Actually a pretty disappointing audio mix here, considering the recentness of the release and the fact that this is not a remix of any kind. The width of the soundstage is not used effectively as most of the effects are plugged through the front speakers, and the bass lacks any sort of power in the musical numbers. The set pieces themselves are pretty bland, a further fault.

Features

Whilst there may at first seem like there is a fairly strong selection of extras included on the disc, in actually fact there is nothing of substance here

Starting with the Deleted Scenes pared from the movie - most of these are actually longer cuts of existing scenes rather than actually omitted ones - totaling 6mins. The Outtake reel is a simple blooper section lasting 5mins, whilst the Behind the Scenes featurette runs in at 7mins. Unfortunately this featurette is promotional fluff and doesn`t delve much into the thought being the movie (perhaps because there wasn`t any…?).

The rest of the extras are practically redundant. The Orchestra Sequence lasts only a couple of minutes, and the Interactive Jam is a poor excuse for a game that will keep you entertained for only a couple of minutes too. There is a music video and the original trailer to round things off.

Conclusion

Raise your voice attempts to position itself as a sweet coming of age drama that utilises Hilary Duff`s popularity after starring in teen sitcoms such as `Lizzy McGuire`.

Unfortunately, the resulting movie is bland in every aspect - which alone would not make it below average in a genre such as this - but also unforgivably, prone to plumbing depths of ridiculousness that make watching it cringeworthy. For example, the `gig` that Terri and Paul sneak out of the house to visit - meant to be the coming of age rite - has about ten extras in the crowd, and ends up unintentionally funny. Hilary Duff`s powder thin vocal talents supposedly representing an excellent opera performance is another scene that made me cringe! Combined with poor acting and even poorer dialogue, this film is one to miss.