Pitch Perfect
Self-aware film more of the same-old cliches
A lot of the fun from Fat Amy. She’s funny because
she’s different than the usual cheerleader/dancers.
People who like Glee will probably love Pitch Perfect, a musical comedy in the sense that there are a lot of songs and people do funny things. One of those things — an epic episode of projectile vomit — is featured in the movie’s opening sequence and given a reprise later, as if it were a hit song the movie was trying to push.
The gross-out moment is typical of Pitch Perfect only in how it conveys the film’s irreverent sense of genre: it’s a movie about people who know they’re in a movie — a let’s-win-the-big-concert movie, in fact — and are being dismissively hip about it. This devil-may-care tone prevails until one of the many musical numbers gives the cast a chance to stage show-stopping adaptations of rock songs, when the smiles slowly morph from ironic to triumphant.
Based on a book by Mickey Rapkin, it’s about students who join a cappella singing groups, a phenomenon that is part of a rather dispiriting trend of students who — if you believe the movies — spend most of their school years getting ready for the big singing/cheerleading/ dance contest. Not that being the best collegiate a cappella singer in America is not important, but you wonder who’s being trained to find that cure for cancer.
In this version of the story, young Beca (Anna Kendrick, the toothy ingenue from Up in the Air and an accomplished stage singer) is a freshman at Barden College, which regards a cappella singing the way Notre Dame looks at football. Beca wants to be a music producer — she’s constantly creating mashups on her home computer — but she’s recruited into The Bellas, the all-girl group that is never quite good enough to win the big trophy.
The Bellas are run by Aubrey (Anna Camp), a control freak with a pitch pipe. There’s a scene where Aubrey confronts Beca in the shower and forces her to sing, thus confirming her suspicions that The Bellas have found their new alto. Both women are nude at the time: Aubrey with unashamed pride and Beca covering herself with anything handy, including the wall. It’s a scene that means to be naughty but doesn’t quite have the conviction of its boob jokes; like much of Pitch Perfect, it is (he said with no little irony) slightly off-key.
Aubrey’s iron rule is the main drawback to The Bellas’ future: her taste is best expressed by the fact that their repertoire includes a version of The Bangles’ song Eternal Flame. There is no such problem with their main competition, the Treblemakers, a sort of over-age boy band headed by Bumper (Adam DeVine), whose confident voice and hip-hop moves define the electric excite- ment of their performances. Their version of Don’t Stop the Music, which opens the movie, gives you an idea of the slick ap- peal of the a cappella culture. Filmmaker Jason Moore was nominated for a Tony Award for his direction of Avenue Q , and his Broadway pedigree shows.
The latest Treblemaker is Jesse (Skylar Astin), a freshman who works with Beca at the campus radio station and develops a crush on her (“We’re going to have aca-children.”) Jesse has a music career in mind as well: he wants to write film scores, and his favourite is The Breakfast Club. That film’s closing scene — over the Simple Minds version of Don’t You Forget About Me — becomes another of the motifs, vying with projectile vomiting for our affection.
The Breakfast Club gives the film a chance to play with the idea of cliches. Beca hates movies because you can always predict the ending: a big kiss between the romantic leads. Pitch Perfect teases us with this idea, then goes ahead and does exactly what’s expected, which takes a certain amount of self-possession, if nothing else.