A sad triumph of face-pulling over emotion

The a cappella girl band in Pitch Perfect 3 are looking for the slimmest of pretexts to get back together after going their separate ways. The Bellas only make sense as a unit, you see. Lo and behold, the film furnishes Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson and their half-dozen cohorts with the barest thread of an excuse to reunite: a USO Europe tour, where they’ll be the warm-up act for producer DJ Khaled, and an assortment of rival bands unfairly equipped with instruments. One of these, Evermoist, is fronted with growl and charisma by Ruby Rose, and the film tumbles into the trap of

making the mean-girl sideshow more enticing than the main event. Perhaps this isn’t entirely fair. Taking their set list from sugar-pop wellsprings, the Bellas haven’t lost the advantages of a snappy vocal arrangement: credit to everyone who makes them sound good, and to the pipes of Kendrick in particular. As an all-round entertainment prospect, though, they peaked in the second movie. Whipping out red flags galore for the Mamma Mia!

sequel, this is one of those here-we-goagain follow-ups-bycommittee. There’s nothing you could call an actual emotion in store, just an awful lot of face-pulling.

It’s got to be a basic rule of cinema in 2017 that no one should pay to watch a Pitch Perfect movie, only to get something visually identical to what Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) turned in when he was still employable.

If the film proves anything, it’s that Kendrick can be set down in almost any gruelling situation and keep up the whole “wait, what?” shtick of hers.