OK, I like Hilary Duff but to be a good film this movie would need to
1: Pick a girl who could sing the entire movie. It bugs me, I'm sorry, but if a role requires a girl with a big voice-cast a girl witha big voice. Don't cast a pop star with a paper thin voice and dub her with an obviously different voice. It made this movie a joke. It came off like a 1 1/2 ad for her CD. Her movie brother Paul commented 'You have the best voice i've ever heard'. and to have that line you need a girl with a voice that blows you away. And it wasn't just Erri. A lot of the singers and musicians just weren't good. I was rolling my eyes thinking "this is the best of the best?"
2: I think the script still needed work. What could have been tolerable fluff instead becomes torturous drama. Her brother's death didn't further the plot or add to the story. It seemed like it was put into to add " a tragic factor" and "conflict". It didn't add depth just a lot over gulit-wrought whining. Terri has like every PTSD symptom in the book making it overdramatic and laughable (the spotlight/head light thing was so cheesy). None one the characters were very fleshed out and real. They were stock types. The good girl, the sassy black roommate, the bitchy compeitive girl, the dark loner, the nice lover interest etc. The writers seemed to have no idea what a arts school was like and ended up ripping off Fame and Crossroads. In fact most of this movie could have been written by anyone who has seen a few afterschool specials in their lifetime. A girl wants to live her dream to honor her brother by going to a school for performing arts. She gets teased by pretty much everyone else. She finds a cute boy and they fall in love. The day of the huge concert she had a heart to heart with the predictable domineering, insensitive, strict father (because the jig is up now)-she realizes her strengths, and overcomes her fears-she sings and daddy dearest knows now that his little girls is so talented and she was right, he was wrong, she needs to live her dream and not be soo overprotected. It's just pathetic.
And Mom collaborates with Terri's Aunt Nina to develop an elaborate scheme that'll get Terri into the school by duping Dad into believing Terri’s going to stay with her aunt. Why can't Mom talk to the man she frickin' married and stick up for her kid! Why send her off to her aunt (who seriously came off like she had problems) and convince Terri to go through a trail of lies? Why shove your kid in something like that? There’s just no way to justify it. Terri objects at first, but the weight of her mom's and aunt's reassurances that she should pursue her own happiness win out in the end. And the deception is maintained, by hook or by crook, throughout most of the rest of the film. Why do all these films need that big, black, ugly blot of deception that runs through the film? Because there are no real consequences experienced by either Terri or her co-conspirators, the message to young filmgoers is that it’s okay to pursue your dreams at any cost. These situation ethics fly in the face of the higher values most of us try to instill in our children: personal integrity, honesty and obedience to parents. Mom should be more upfront not pick up the family leadership reins behind his back when she doesn’t like his direction. Divorce in the making! Her aunt is no help either, she undermines Terri's dad's authority calling him “closed-minded” and telling the kids he’s “being his squash-any-good-idea self.” Whether he is or not, they are his kids not hers. unt Nina gives a smile and a nod when she sees them sneak out. And why would Terri take a drunk guy on a roof? That's not very bright. So the script sucked. It needed work.
(To A.N.)I really, truly, madly, deeply, passionately, remarkably, deliciously love you.
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