Strikes the right note
Our favorite girl group hits Europe & hobnobs with DJ Khaled
‘PITCH Perfect 3” begins with a yacht exploding in the French Riviera, features John Lithgow sporting a questionable Australian accent and includes a scene in which a swarm of bees wreaks havoc in DJ Khaled’s hotel room.
And why not? The weird circumstances hardly matter. That’s because the most shocking thing about this oh-so-lovable movie series is that it successfully makes a cappella — the Dungeons & Dragons of music — look cool.
In the very funny third film, the girls in the music group the Barden Bellas are finally out of college and discovering that when Dr. Seuss wrote “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” he was really referring to dead-end jobs and dinky studio apartments. Sad and lonely, they decide to get the band back together and hit the road on a USO tour of Europe. Hopping from Spain to Italy to France, the Bellas — including Anna Kendrick’s Beca and Rebel Wilson’s hilarious Fat Amy — battle three other acts for a chance to open for DJ Khaled.
They sip Champagne, party in classy casinos and are cheered like rock stars at every stop, just like your average liberal-arts college a cappella group.
There is more going on plotwise than the movie can handle. For instance, we follow a couple of romances for 90 minutes that completely fizzle out in the end. But the movie is, nonetheless, a total delight, thanks to its proven formula of clever pop arrangements, dry humor and superb casting.
“Three” boasts some of the series’ best music, too. The bands competing against the Bellas are from a smattering of different genres: Young Sparrow is hip-hop, Saddle Up is country and Evermoist is Avril Lavigne-like. During the “riff-off,” a sort-of musical rumble, the mix of discordant styles is actually exciting to hear.
But it really all comes down to the Bellas. With brilliant actresses such as Wilson, who has a badass fight scene this time, and Kendrick, the stealthily vicious pixie, the studio could drop this cast into a DMV with a pitch pipe and they would make a decent movie out of it — a movie that I would pay to see.