SORRY, LADIES, BUT IT’S HIGH TIME THE BELLAS LEFT THE STAGE

THE first two Pitch Perfect films were great fun. In fact, I bestowed four stars on the last one, in May 2015, and wrote that it was ‘pitched perfectly at any audience craving a couple of hours of unremitting, occasionally risqué fun’. They should have left it there. Pitch Perfect 3, like so many movies with the dreaded 3 after the title, is a misfire. Like Christmas leftovers on the third or fourth day, the energy of the first two films feels as if it’s been microwaved, warmed up hurriedly and a bit half-heartedly in vain search of former glories. Moreover, even in the last film a little Rebel Wilson went a long way. Here, there’s way, way too much of her, indeed she pretty much takes over from Anna Kendrick as the main character, which counts as a major misjudgment on somebody’s part. Wilson is a charismatic performer, undoubtedly, but her steady supply of off-colour one-liners somehow suck the charm out of the exercise. As for the story, the champion a cappella singing group, the Bellas, have now left college and are all trying, with varying degrees of failure, to make their way in the world. Fat Amy (Wilson)