raise your voice recap rewatch

I Rewatched ‘Raise Your Voice’ As An Adult & Had An Existential Crisis

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There’s a handful of bizarre movies from the noughties where you either know the film and adore it with all your heart, or you’ve never even heard of it. Hilary Duff’s 2005 movie Raise Your Voice falls into this special category.

The movie was absolutely savaged by critics upon its release. My favourite review is from USA Today who wrote: “Even the kindest reaction to Raise Your Voice is likely to be ‘shut your face.'” I can’t say that’s not direct and concise.

While the film flopped at the box office, it eventually found a cult following and somehow became one of my favourite movies to watch growing up and I can’t quite explain why.

Rotten Tomatoes summarises the film as: “A teenage girl learns that reaching for your dreams isn’t always easy in this heartfelt drama with music.” It is indeed a “heartfelt drama with music” and the storyline follows Terry (Duff), a 16-year-old with aspirations to be singer, whose dream of joining a prestigious music school is called into question after her biggest supporter, her brother, dies in a car accident.

This all happens in the first ten minutes of the film. I decided that I had to rewatch this movie that I viewed on constant rotation in my youth. Oh boy, I was in for an ~experience~ like no other.

I Rewatched Raise Your Voice As An Adult & Had An Existential Crisis.

The film begins with a black screen and the words, “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy,” a quote from Beethoven. Why? I have literally no clue and it is never explained or spoken of again. Cool.

Then we’re in high school choir class and Terry is singing ‘Joy To The World’ and loving herself sick. “Call me a dork but I love choir practice!’” she tells a friend we never see again. Terry lives in a small town, we know this as a random man is just hanging an American flag for no apparent reason.

At a family barbecue, Terry says she is excited about a prestigious music school that she applied to and her dad rolls his eyes, butting in that it’s “some music thing in LA,” completely dismissing her.

It’s a rule that all dads in ’00s movies must be irrationally disapproving of their daughter’s dreams.

Thankfully, her brother Paul thinks Terry is a superstar in the making. He defends his sis and in one scene actually tells her this:

raise your voice recap

No comment.

Also, Paul looks like every lead singer of an ’00s emo band I used to imagine was my boyfriend when I was high school (*cough* still to this day). Anyways, Paul is low-key obsessed with his sister. Terry is singing in her room and Paul records her, I assume she is supposed to sound….good?? I’m not convinced. He follows her around and edits together clips of her singing into her hairbrush and submits the video to the fancy music school.

One night Terry and Paul sneak out and go to a Three Days Grace gig (which is painfully 2005) and on the way home, they get hit by a car and Paul dies dead. Terry wakes up in the hospital and is told by her mum that Paul didn’t make it.

Her tepid reaction to the news looks like me when my sister tells me she finished the last of the Tim Tams:

Actually, when my sister told me I cried for five days.

Terry gets into the music school and while she says she doesn’t want to sing anymore, her mum and aunt convince her to go. She arrives in LA and immediately gets her jacket stolen and as she taxis to school, she sees someone rummaging through a dumpster. That’s LA, baby! The city of dreams!

She knocks on her dorm room’s door and hunky British guy Jay makes fun of her, which is pretty much the exact same way Amanda Bynes first meets this actor (Oliver James) two years earlier in What A Girl Wants. This is suss, I’m convinced it’s the same character. I unfortunately looked up the actor on Twitter to discover that he’s now an anti-masker, so it’s best he just lives on forever as these two this one character — and the ultimate ’00s thirst-trap.

As Terry finally gets past Jay and goes up to her room, she meets her roommate Denise, who despises the sight of her, complaining she hoped she had her own room. She rushes to call her dad and tricks him into thinking she has not moved to LA but is instead staying with her aunt. Men are big idiots.

The school has its first assembly where Aidan from Sex And The City is playing the cello, and we learn he’s one of the teachers. Aidan is a chaotic teacher but extremely sexy. The Dean is the dad from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, he announces that for the semester students will work on a piece to be performed at a final concert and the best performance will win an academic scholarship.

In the courtyard, all the students start playing some song, each adding an element with their different instruments one after the other.

Two girls simply sing “ooh ooh ooh, yeahhhhh!” over and over again. Why is it that when I try to do this on Bourke Street, buskers always immediately alert the police??

This scene once led me to believe that students studying music and arts always spontaneously break into song like this, which made adulthood very disappointing for me.

Terry is struggling to make friends or, rather, find anyone that will talk to her at all. She sucks at classical training and can’t even identify a B-flat. An absolute amateur. I forgot that Chilli from The OC is in this (RIP, the actor Johnny Lewis died in 2012) and omg, it’s Kat Dennings! She’s in this as a mysterious pianist who doesn’t speak and Chilli is obsessed with getting her attention. More on that laters!

Back with Terry, she asks Denise what her problem is and she says she didn’t mean to come across as uncaring but just “doesn’t want to get caught up in any personalities” which I’m adding to my Tinder bio.

In Aidan’s class, he notices that Terry is not very good and can’t harmonious for shit, then in another class the Russian teacher can’t deal with her rubbish singing either and his reaction to her voice is a mood.

Terry and Jay start hanging out, he says he left London to study music in LA because his parents got a divorce. She replies “so music is your higher power?” and I honestly don’t know what this means or why she says it.

As Terry is in the middle of telling Jay that her brother recently died, he just flakes on their convo and runs away. At the same time Denise appears to warn her that Jay preys on nice girls like her.

Terry replies in a truly baffling way. To this day, I still think about this godawful piece of dialogue when I try to fall asleep each night.

Make it stop! It haunts me!

Back in class, Aidan again tells Terry that he’s surprised she’s so terrible and reveals that her brother sent in a recording of her and that’s the reason she got into the school. Reminder: in the video she is just singing in the choir and then into her hairbrush. This totally checks out. He plays it for her and she runs off crying and packs up her bags to leave — it’s very dramatic. Jay interrupts and tries to convince her to come for a walk.

“The bag isn’t walking away,” he says. “How do I know you won’t,” Terry replies, which is a low-key psychotic thing to say to a guy you just met. But hey, who am I to judge. I once told a guy on a Tinder date that our wedding dance song would be ‘Special Two’ by Missy Higgins. He unmatched while I went to the bathroom. The special two, we were not.

After Terry and Jay have a talk, they start dating and all of a sudden Terry seems to be good at singing?? We know this because she performs the weirdest vocal performance ever put to film and everyone is impressed. There’s no way to explain it, you simply have to watch it.

Hilary needs an exorcism. There are at least five different singing voices stuck inside her.

raise your voice recap

I hear that everyone who watches that performance is cursed forever like those who view the video from The Ring. But instead of a little girl climbing out of the well, it’s Hilary Duff.

Terry walks in on Jay performing on the piano and he sings her a song and it’s very important that I relay all the lyrics as they’re just beautiful:

“You and me,

Can’t you see,

How our hearts are one,

Please believe,

And don’t deceive,

Now our journey’s just begun,

Sunlight in your hair,

Makes my heart jump in the air.”

raise your voice recap rewatch

Ed Sheeran is shaking.

Chilli is still obsessed with piano girl, he even makes her song called ‘She Doesn’t Even Know’ which he plays loudly when she’s around. Again, men are big idiots. Terry convinces piano girl to come on a group date and she arrives dressed like she’s about to go to the barbershop and bake Chill into a meat pie, which would be a much interesting plot development than those two just getting together.

On the date, Terry sees that Denise is busking and has the audacity to interrupt her, make her change the song she’s playing on violin, and then sings loudly over her.

Did I mention Terry is the worst?

raise your voice recap

Terry takes Jay to the roof and says she comes up there to think. She asks him what he thinks about and he replies “stuff”. I felt that. He tries to kiss her and she says they’re moving too fast. Jay suggests they write a song together for the final performance, and then she kisses him. Was the song-writing all a ruse for some kissy time? Maybe. Do I hate myself for just typing the words ‘kissy time’? Definitely.

Jay tries to convince Terry to perform at an open mic night, but again, we are reminded that she is not very good. As she sings the first verse, we are supposed to think she’s triggered back to the car accident by the bright lights.

She runs off and doesn’t go to school the next day. Aidan scolds Terry for missing class and she finally reveals what she’s been holding in this whole movie:

raise your voice

Oh, and she tells him her brother died in a car crash.

Back in class, there’s some side drama with Jay’s ex Robin. She’s angry that Terry stole her part and her boyfriend Jay, as they dated the year prior. He tells her he’s changed and “isn’t the same person I was last summer.” Jay’s not a girl, not yet a woman.

Robin ignores Jay’s weird words and pulls him in for a kiss, just as Terry bursts in and sees. She runs away (again) and goes to her room and rips up the lyrics to the song they wrote together.

Let’s remember that Jay is just some fuckboi from England who has a blonde spiked mohawk and dresses like this:

raise your voice recap

Terry stops talking to Jay, she walks around LA miserable, and while praying at church Aidan comes to comfort her. She talks about missing her brother, and he tells her she’s an artist so therefore feels things deeper and actually compares her to Patsy Cline.

My eyes roll so far back in my head that I can see my own butt.

Jay arrives drunk outside Terry’s apartment to make amends, which is always a smart strategy. “I wasn’t kissing her, she was kissing me,” he slurs out. “Just chill out!” he shouts at Denise as she tells him to go away. Terry takes him to the roof so he doesn’t get in trouble for being drunk, he sleeps up there and when he awakes all seems fine between them.

I didn’t realise arriving at my ex’s house drunk was the way to win them back but I’m taking notes.

Back with Terry’s dad the jig, as they say, is well and truly up. He gets an invite in the mail to Terry’s final performance and umm how tf did they go through all this cover-up and still supply the school with her father’s address?? If Lizzie Maguire can convince the world she’s Italian pop star Isabella Parigi then I think Terry should be able to pass along her aunt’s address.

The mum tells the dad that Terry’s been in LA this whole time and the dad is angry (for a change) so goes to see Terry the day of the final performance. He is waiting for her in her room, packing up all her belongings, and tells her she’s leaving. Terry finally snaps and stands up for herself, telling him “you don’t listen to anybody and we’re all afraid of you,” which is pretty alarming. Yikes.

No one:

Not a soul:

Women telling mediocre men in every ’00s movie:

Over at the final performance, Denise is bossing it, she kicks her chair triumphantly so you know she’s good. Terry and Jay are announced on stage next and I’m shook to learn that Terry’s full name is Teresa. Bitch, why are you going by Terry? Terry. Terry? What successful singer’s name is Terry? It’s like if Shakira wanted to be referred to as Shazza.

Anyways, they perform their song ‘Someone’s Watching Over Me’ from beginning to end — so we know it’s supposed to be good. It does slap and even the angry dad is into it, he even holds his wife’s hand, for the first time ever I assume.

Afterwards Terry and Jay kiss, so I guess they’re back together! At least for now, until Jay morphs into a new person next summer. I wonder if he’ll still be British…what if he becomes Italian.

raise your voice recap

WE SEE YOU, PAOLO. It all makes sense.

After all that Terry and Jay don’t win the scholarship, Denise does! The reason why is complicated: she’s simply much better. It’s nice as we earlier learned she needed the money to support herself in school. Terry’s dad tells his daughter that he was wrong and seeing her sing on stage was the proudest moment of his life. Aidan comes over and they all agree she will return to the music school the following year.

The movie ends with the students having a jam session and for some reason, Terry is the only one singing this time. I guess all the other singers have to stay silent while Terry sings. One could say…her voice is officially raised.

This movie is in a league of its own.