Director : Sean McNamara Starring : Hilary Duff, John Corbett, Rebecca De Mornay Trailer for Raise Your Voice Cinema.com Trailers (Varios formats) (www.cinema.com) Official trailer (Quicktime) (progressive.stream.aol.com) More Movie Reviews...

Have you had enough of Hilary Duff yet? I feel like I certainly have – although, to paraphrase Michael Corleone, every time I think that I'm done with her and her movies, she somehow pulls me right back in. It's like she's the G-rated Paris Hilton. I've been over-inundated by her so much for the past year or so I feel like I can't turn around without her seeping into the cultural mush that is my brain. Turn on the TV – there she is in reruns of Lizzie McGuire, or in moderate-to-heavy rotation on MTV or VH1. Turn on the radio – it's "So Yesterday" or that whiny song about the rain falling down that will not work its way out of my head. Scurry over to the more adult antics on Page Six and there's the latest item on her ongoing feud with Lindsay Lohan. And just this year I've had to sit through A Cinderella Story and now Raise Your Voice. And yet, somehow, again, in some small way, she has made me care. Damn her!

Raise Your Voice is a follow-your-heart, follow-your-music movie that feels as if someone had taken the 1980 film Fame, dunked it in a bubble bath, scrubbed all the grit and soul out of it until it was squeaky-clean, doused it with perfume, and then slapped a pink bow on its head. Despite the heavy agenda on clean living and never kissing your boyfriend with your tongue, though, it's a perfectly serviceable vehicle for Duff, who actually gets to grow up a little bit. In her first stab at teen drama (well, drama-lite), Duff is pleasant and amiable and cheery (when she's not teary), and trades on her standard stock-in-trade: being The Average Girl Who Everybody Likes. She's an engaging performer who can rise a bit above the treacle and blandness of her material, but isn't quite a break-out star; she's what in the '50s would have been dubbed a "role-model" actress. You could say she's the new Sandra Dee, but at least Dee had some subtext. Duff is blissfully, and happily, text-free.

How Teflon-ready is she? Duff is so non-stick that even the first twenty minutes of Raise Your Voice, in which she's saddled with a dysfunctional family that seems cribbed from the Fitts of American Beauty, slides right off her like water off a duck. Her Terri is a happy high schooler with a freakishly overprotective and tyrannical dad (David Keith), a dishwater-bland mother (Rita Wilson), and an older brother (Jason Ritter) who's never far away from his video camera, but at least does not have a fetish for plastic bags. This older brother, who seems a just a little too interested in his younger, nubile sister, sends off a secret DVD of Terri's Greatest Hits to the prestigious Bristol-Hillman Performing Arts Academy to supplement her application for the school's summer music program. That night, however, he and his sister are hit by a drunk driver on their way home from sneaking out to a concert; she survives, he doesn't. Wracked with guilt, Terri refuses to sing again – until an acceptance letter arrives in her mailbox. Working with her mom and aunt (Rebecca DeMornay, cast most likely because her hair is the closest match to Duff's), Terri outfoxes her dad and heads for LA and the world of teen summer music classes.

Once it's gotten past its icky family dynamics (Keith makes one of the most terrifying fathers in recent memory), Raise Your Voice is standardly pleasant, as Terri charms the school, wins over the token bohemian prof (John Corbett in leather pants), and finally discovers the joys of singing again. The stock characters are nicely cast – there's the driven roommate (Dana Davis, who appears to have borrowed some of Gabrielle Union's DNA), the goofy guy (Johnny K. Lewis), the goth girl (Kat Dennings), the bitchy girl (Lauren C. Mayhew), and the vaguely European dreamboat (Oliver James) -- and the whole story unfolds like the Nickelodeon version of The Real World. Terri's biggest fear is, of course, fear itself, and though she indulges in one crying jag too many, she finally manages to let her (overproduced) voice soar and learns how to write bad pop songs. Still, you can't hate Duff for it for long -- it would be like hating a puppy for not piddling on the carpet. She may not have the depth of talent that other actresses of her ilk possess (most notably Lohan), but she seems serenely, contentedly happy doing what she's doing. And far be it from me to tell her that adulthood is just around the corner, waiting to change all her teenage joys. Let her enjoy it while she can.