Hilary Duff concert was a night for girls

Review: Hilary Duff concert was a night for the girls

CREDIT: Times Colonist

Hilary Duff performs Saturday night at Victoria's Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.

Leah Collins
Times Colonist
Sunday, August 05, 2007

Who: Hilary Duff
Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre
When: Saturday night
Rating: 3 out of 5

There are many ways to describe Hilary Duff. She's nice: encouraging each of her fans last night at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre to bring canned goods for charity. Her last two Canadian tours have collected more than 57,000 kilograms of food for the hungry. She even tried on a hairnet last week in Edmonton to serve meals to the homeless.

She's sweet -- as hockey star boyfriend Mike Comrie would likely agree (no sighting of him last night). As she told Seventeen magazine last fall, there's nothing she wants more than "the cookie-cutter American Dream. To get married, have kids and have a house with a picket fence." She's polite: thanking the crowd for picking up those $45 and up T-shirts sold at the doors.

She doesn't party, she doesn't drive drunk on the wrong side of a freeway, she doesn't flash paparazzi.

She is also the idol of millions of little girls who've wanted her to be their big sister since catching their first episode of Lizzie Maguire on the Disney Channel.

All these things make the thought of a Hilary Duff show mildly heartwarming. Because it's stating the obvious to mention this show was for the girls. For hundreds of them, dressed up in their own pop-star finery, this was a rite of passage.

Before things started, they were squealing, some bouncing over their seats so much their watchful moms had to anchor them back to their seats. But when Duff appeared, there was one more way to describe her, and considering her effect on the fans it's a little heartbreaking to admit it: She's totally bland.

The electroclash-y Play With Fire was how she made her entrance, strutting down a staircase, flanked by four dancers in a silver short-short jumpsuit, drenched in ghetto-fab jewelry. The outfit sparkled more than poor Duff, though. The number was for dancing, but all she could muster was a few little struts around the stage, occasionally shaking a hip should she feel steady enough on those strappy stilettos. The pop princesses in the stands would probably have more pizazz in their mommies' heels.

The flash carried things along as hit bled into hit. Little fists were pumping along to Come Clean and Getaway while Duff ducked backstage for possibly the most anemic costume change in pop concert history: switching stiletto sandals for black patent pumps. The set stuck closely to Duff's latest record, Dignity, a dancefloor-engineered collection with a debt to pay to the godmothers of the arena pop show -- Madonna, Kylie Minogue -- though amusingly she has been paying closer attention to the work of Pat Benatar; a to-the-note cover of Love Is a Battlefield was probably Duff's most dedicated dance performance, recreating the classic video's shimmying dance-off. The few older, frothier E-Z rock hits included in the 90-minute set got slight retoolings to match the show's dance-y vibe.

So Yesterday turned reggae, complete with a shout-out to Bob Marley. She could have done the song to a polka beat, for all the kids cared, though.

What they got out of the show, never mind how good it was, were some skills they'll carry with them for years. They learned that it's OK to dance like a maniac to your favourite song, to raise a lighter -- ok, maybe a $10 glowstick -- when things shifted into power-ballad mode and to scream like mad when they hear the words, "Good night, Victoria!"

Courtesy: Canada.com