"it's really fun and totally easy"

FROM July 15, 2004

Hilary Duff—scrubbed junior miss for upper-middle-class white America—ranks in the lower eighth percentile of likeable teen queens throughout history, somewhere after the properer cousin of Patty Duke, and a sliver above the chortling best friend off Blossom. (This is due in part to her regular character, Lizzie McGuire. Lizzie's sole life-dilemma is her clumsiness, a sickeningly endearing device meant to offset her honorable school marks; devoted friends; beauty; incredibly cool, well-off parents; and random crazy trips to Italy, where she rides around on a motorbike with a romantic princely hottie and stars in a music video. A wonderful life... except, oops! She tripped over a chair in front of a cute boy from the badminton club! POOR, POOR LIZZIE MCGUIRE.)

But for now, I will forgive, because her movie company has provided the MOST AMAZING free-time-eater since rainbow pegasus e-cards. Click on the cell phone and Hilary will call any of your friends with a personalized Cinderella story.