“You’ve got a toner”
I honestly believe in my love for the first season of Glee. It was a show which mashed so many great things together and was also able to create a quirky fun comedy. However, over the years it’s devolved into the worst version of itself becoming pretty much the latest edition of the top of the Billboard charts of the moment. While I don’t believe that Pitch Perfect is equivalent to the worst of Glee I’m not quite sure that it’s as good as the best of it.
Beca (Anna Kendrick) is a young loner who’s being forced to attend University and eventually put up to the task of actually making something of this experience. She decides to join the Bellas, the all female acapella group on campus, and find her place in this wide world of music adoration.
The film makes it plainly obvious that while it’s subservient and in love with the music, in the same breath we’re mocking everything about acapella and glee. Why would twelve people want to sing in harmony on stage rather than have a backing band? Why would we want to have these crowds (where did those crowds come from?) cheering on a group of young adult men who make a life of making sure they sound like boys? Why? Why? Why? With Fred Willard and Elizabeth Banks commentating every note it’s very easy to get the jokes and it works. Even in some of the more pivotal scenes, like the ‘riff-off’, there’s no way you walk away from that scene without laughing at the audacity of it all.
Some of the jokes remain on their surface at all times. Watching Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) being tossed junk food, or realizing she can’t do cardio and has to run ‘horizontally’ while lying down on a bench. Others remain around waiting for the best time to emerge, like Lilly (Hana Mae Lee) with her silent voice or Benji (Ben Platt) with his magic and how they end up being massive revealing moments in the end.
Where this film walks into problems is where we see characters buying too much into their own absurdity. Watching the group continually following Aubrey (Anna Camp) over controlling and traditional approach to an environment that refuses to be contained by tradition when watching every other performance put on by every other troupe in the show is somewhat in comprehensible. While that confrontation comes eventually in the film, it’s too late and we’ve already spent the last hour groaning way too heavily at the same problem.
Regardless of any complaint I can fling at this film, Kendrick comes off completely charming and steals the show. Including the fact that she offers a much more enjoyable music selection than what the rest of the film gives us she’s just magnetic here and works everytime she’s on screen.