It’s no secret that my knee-jerk reactions to Pitch Perfect were less than optimistic. Each time I heard the term, “pitch slapped”, I groaned with constipation. It’s also no secret that I have an aversion to the TV show Glee . Now that didn’t exactly bode well for my opinion about this movie. Even though it stars my beloved Anna Kendrick and the magical Rebel Wilson, I just thought this movie would be just another bandwagoning derivative of the believe in yourself/it’s OK to be different/coming-of-age/sing-songy bullcorn that Glee vomits all over us every single week. Much to my delight, it isn’t (but there is some vomiting involved).
In Pitch Perfect, Kendrick plays Beca, a freshman at Barden University who is there against her own will. She wants to go off to L.A. to become a big time D.J. music maestro, while her father is forcing her to stay put. So they make a deal: if she participates in the “college experience” and joins some sort of club, he will unchain her from university life and let her roam free in the wilds of L.A. After an impromptu nude audition (yup, there’s some hot naked a capella action in this movie) with Chloe (Brittany Snow), one of the leaders of the all-female a capella group the Barden Bellas, Beca reluctantly gets reeled into the competitive world of collegiate a capella groups.
Adapted by screenwriter Kay Cannon from the book by Mickey Rapkin, Pitch Perfect is one of the few movies that can combine comedy, music, heart, and a scant amount of irony and make it work — and a lot of that has to do with director Jason Moore. As the Tony Award-winning director of the raunchy and rowdy puppet musical Avenue Q , he pretty much creates a musical movie-going experience that is tolerable and thoroughly entertaining from the start of the movie when Anna Camp character vomits on stage to the big Bardem Bella musical mash-upfinale.
At first, I was surprised that Anna Kendrick would take a role like this. But then I realized that the homegirl had some musical chops because of her performance in the HIGHLY underrated movie, Camp . Combined with her ability to combine comedy and genuine heart, she delivered the goods as Beca. As for her character being a “cool alternative” DJ, that took me a while to buy. I also was distracted in how Beca’s love interest (played by Skylar Astin) reminded me of Dane Cook — but the hip a capella music and comedy bits make up for all of that nonsense. With Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp, pop-R&B singer/songwriter Ester Dean, Hana Mae Lee, Alexis Knapp and a host of other gals, they built a mighty fine ensemble that provided a focal point of the movie that will make you LOL and sing along all at once.
The comparisons of Pitch Perfect to Glee are inevitable — but there big difference is that Pitch Perfect is actually cooler and better. Sure, it’s only a standalone movie, but I would rather watch Pitch Perfect over and over again than watch an entire season of Glee. The music choice and execution is pretty jammin’ and will make you have no choice but to buy the soundtrack (or dig up your old Blackstreet CD to jam out to “No Diggity”). The movie flips the school musical singing group genre on its head with a clever Bring it On sensibility and humor to it. Pitch Perfect is aware of itself and what kind of movie it is. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but knows that it needs to have a certain level of honesty and earnestness to not enter into the territory of cheesy and trite after school specials. That said, I can confidently say that I am now more than happy to get “pitch slapped”. I would get “pitch slapped” everyday if could.
Pitch Perfect opens in select theaters today and opens nationwide on October 5.
Source:
http://blog.dinoray.com/2012/09/28/pitch-perfect-an-aca-mazing-anti-glee-movie/