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Directed by tween specialist Sean McNamara, Hilary Duff’s new vanity project begins with a quote from Beethoven to the effect that music beats out religion and philosophy when it comes to wisdom. Then it cuts to a teenybopper choir singing Three Dog Night’s "Joy to the World." Maybe the filmmakers confused it with the "Ode to Joy," because they seem unaware of any irony. Such ingenuous bad taste and corn make Raise Your Voice the camp classic of the current millennium. Duff’s Terri is a sweet kid from the sticks with a big talent who wants to go to music school in LA. Her dad (David Keith, here an apparent graduate of the George W. Bush School of Debate) objects. Her mother (Rita Wilson) and aunt (Rebecca De Mornay, whose appearance on a ladder with a blowtorch in the guise of a steel sculptor writes the epitaph to a career) help her fool her dad so she can get away and have adventures with other teen phenoms at the Fame-like summer school. Oh, and her brother gets killed in a car crash in which she’s injured, so that the headlights of the drunk driver she sees in flashback give her wicked stage fright! Because of the spotlights! The spotlight of fame evoking the beacon of inevitable death — didn’t Three Dog Night say something about that, too? At the Apple Valley, Entertainment, Flagship, Holiday, Providence Place 16, and Showcase cinemas. (103 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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