Susan Granger’s review of “The Lizzie McGuire Movie” (Walt Disney Pictures)
While I must confess to never having seen “The Lizzie Maguire Show” on the Disney Channel, I vividly remember graduating from middle school and, like Lizzie, desperately wanting to press the “reset” button on my life. 15 year-old Lizzie (Hilary Duff) is not only insecure but a ditsy klutz whose ineptitude turns her eighth-grade graduation ceremony into a humiliating debacle. Then she’s off on a madcap school-sponsored trip to Rome, where she’s mistaken for Isabella, a temperamental Italian pop star. The resemblance is so uncanny that suave, Armani-clad Paolo (Yani Gellman), Isabella’s ex-partner, sets off in hot pursuit on his Vespa, much to the distress of Lizzie’s longtime pal Gordo (Adam Lamberg). Paolo finds Lizzie cute and charming so, of course, she agrees to impersonate Isabella and live out her ultra-cool diva fantasies, complete with fabulous, far-out clothes (credit costumer David Robinson). Playing the dual roles of Lizzie and Isabella, bubbly, blonde Hilary Duff is adorable, if not completely believable, bopping around in a brunette wig and talking with an awkward accent. Except for scene-stealing Alex Borstein (MAD TV”) as Mrs. Ungermeyer, the tenacious chaperone, all of the other actors merely skim the surface of their superficial characters. Nevertheless, I fondly remember the benign, formulaic “Gidget” films of my youth and this refreshingly wholesome drivel, directed by Jim Fall, fills much the same societal niche – with travelogue nods to “Three Coins in the Fountain” and “Roman Holiday.” On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Lizzie McGuire Movie” is a silly, sudsy, sweet 6 – but if you’re nine to 14 years old (i.e.: really into Lizzie and her animated alter-ego), you’re gonna love it.
