I Still Love Hilary Duff

Bless you, Hilary Duff, for trying. Bless you for a gaining a little bit of weight so you look slightly more human. Bless you for always acting like Lizzie McGuire no matter what character you play so that I can never completely hate your movies no matter how poorly made they are.

I really wanted to like "Material Girls," but there was not much there to like. It was pretty boring and not at all funny. The only time I laughed was when the gym teacher from Lizzie McGuire showed up in a scene in which Hilary Duff's character, Tanzie Marchetta, ends up in jail. And that was more of a chuckle than an actual laugh.

Hilary and Haylie Duff play rich, spoiled sisters (what a stretch) who are about to lose their father's makeup company. They also burn down their house and get their stolen by two men (played by Joel Madden, Hilary Duff's real life boyfriend, and his brother, Benji) who they think are valets. We are somehow expected to believe that Tanzie, who is stupid enough to burn her house down, is smart enough to be a genius in chemistry. She would rather fill out applications to UCLA than party. Points for trying not to be a stereotype, but it never really flies.

There are too many subplots in this movie that never get fleshed out. A romantic interest for each of the girls (actually two for Ava, Haylie's character), a housekeeper who is like a mother to the girls who has two daughters of her own, and a woman who wants to buy their father's makeup company, to name a few. The editing in this movie is choppy, transitioning from scene to scene with no real purpose or connection other than trying to show how silly and funny the girls are when trying to do something as common as riding a bus. It is neither silly nor funny, just sad that the writers of this movie could not come up with anything more original.

I am not disappointed that I saw this movie. It proved to me that Hilary Duff still hasn't changed. She is still the innocent and adorable girl who can't act, but is so darn sweet that it doesn't matter. Even Haylie Duff was less obnoxious in this movie than she normally is, maybe because she didn't really have to act. I will continue to support Hilary Duff as long as she keeps making movies I love to hate, and possibly even after.