So to college or not to college, that is the question. It is also the premise behind the new film piggy-backing on the current world fad that “pop stars should start with a great voice that ALL sounds exactly the same”. Wonder how The Rolling Stones ever made it to 50 years of a growing fan base. Pitch Perfect is a high-spirited, pleasing-to-the-ear example of how college life of that “other” nerd group could be more fun and rewarding than your traditional letterman-jacket-wearing jocks and scholastic front-row-sitting-bell-curve movers.
Anna Kendrick (from Up in the Air) is Beca, your cliche loner who aspires to be a DJ. She meets Skylar Astin (never seen him before) who plays Jesse. Their first glance at each other was a serenade from him in a cab during college move-in day. Beca makes a deal with her father that if she really tries and joins at least one club during her first year in college, he will support her dream to move to Los Angeles and “pay her dues” to be a DJ. A father in support of college drop-out?! Wow. Is that how the kids roll today?
Beca can’t join the campus’s most popular club; it’s for boys only. So she joins the second most popular club, which is an acapella singing group for girls. Jesse just happens to be selected to join the rival boys club, where dating between the two club members are prohibited. How original to incorporate the ingredients of a Montague vs. Capulet element to the romance. So this group of social misfits and high school loners will join as one for the goal of national acappella champions, to be crowned in Lincoln Center in New York City. Of course along the way, Beca and Jesse will fall in love, and Jesse will somehow wrong Beca, but they will reconcile and live happily ever after.
This highly touted script for Pitch Perfect is highly flawed. Though insightful and catchy for one-liners, whether they are improvised or written, the story here is not only predictable, but several sub-plots actually just fizzled out. What happened to Beca’s DJ career? What happened to her relationship with the campus DJ who wanted to take her on as a protege?
I am not a fan of Glee, because I think cover bands and cover singing is for high school talent show and under. But Pitch Perfect has a cast that is likable. Though their respective characters are not well developed even for a screenwriting student’s first project to hand in, I saw this film as what it is – a quick glimpse to a singing sensation that’s the current fad amidst pop culture. And all these characters can sing, right down to an improvisational “sing-off” as opposed to the old fashion drag-race down at Thunder Alley.
Anna Kendrick is a great actress, and now I know she can also belt out a tune like an American Idol winner. She’s not your most attractive, bikini-model that the guys would go gaga over; she’s actually quite odd looking, with a gigantic face and a disproportional body. But she’s a great actor, so she knows how to sell her character with the best of her abilities, which is through her eyes, her smile, her gestures, and just her downright likable and confident presence.
It’s a shame that there are great characters introduced in Pitch Perfect that just didn’t go anywhere. A great opportunity missed was Beca’s roommate, Kimmy Jin. A classic racial division that should have been interesting to watch, but ended up being a sometimes offensive scene-enders as poorly developed joke butts. A great screenwriting professor once told me that he hated nothing more than to end a scene with someone uttering, “I gotta go.” It’s as if the screenwriter basically gives up on a scene. Never mind scene development issues, how did this script surpassed first draft when it has mulitple characters literally and metaphorically saying “I gotta go” to end scenes? What ensued was a great talent show that leaves you humming after the credits. There are great one-liners that you will chuckle out loud and of course one ambiguously gay character that doesn’t come out of the closet but still has you smiling because these are cute, non-threatening kids singing heavenly.
Though flawed, I did enjoy Pitch Perfect. It is what is is, a terribly written script, but this is a film that didn’t really need the script. Its magic relied in its music and its cast. Go on YouTube and find yourself any featurette with Rebel Wilson or Adam Devine and they are just as interesting as the film itself. That tells you how well this script worked for Pitch Perfect. The film did remind me of my college days, in a way, that everyone is as different as can be, but if they are able to find that one connection with each other, their world would be as harmonious as the songs they sing.
Rebel Wilson is already a big star because everything that comes out of her mouth is humorous. I think since her appearances on Australia’s “Thank God You’re Here”, she was destined to be in features. Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins play a pair of line-stealing commentators that should have a spin-off of their own. If you enjoy this film, you should also check out Fired Up! Higgins is also a line-stealing support character there.
There is a ridiculous reference and an embarrassing subplot involving John Hughes‘ The Breakfast Club where Jesse attempts to pull Beca out of her shell by having her watch “the best ending of all movies”. Beca claims that all movies end the same so she never watches the ending. Though it is true that a majority of films all end the same, thus the term “Hollywood Endings”, using The Breakfast Club just seems improbable and random. First of all, Beca complained that The Bellas’ song list was too old and didn’t contain a single selection from this decade. So why go even further back to feature a song from the 80’s? Then, I don’t think Jesse, someone who is a bit more mature than his age, would select a high school film to show off to his love interest. This is a rocker full of machismo and energy, having picked Feels Like the First Time by Foreigner to sing at the riff-off. His all-time best film ending would be either The Godfather or Braveheart. Also, The Breakfast Club is THE most overrated and trite John Hughes film of all-time. The Breakfast Club just does not hold up well with time. It is so pre-reality that it contained absolutely no reality. Though worked as an essay about teenage angst, it did not translate well to the big screen. For a teenage film to work we need to actually see these thought-provoking and life changing events. It’s as if Love Letters the film is just two people sitting behind their desks reading their diary entries. The film really gave those who grew up in the 80’s a bad rap. Also, the film was poorly cast. Molly Ringwald, whom perfectly cast in Pretty in Pink, is the prom queen here?! Was this the school for the blind? Emilio Estevez is the school jock?! Was this the “Pillsbury Doughboy High School”?! Lastly, it is absolutely sacrilegious to do ANYTHING to Simple Minds‘ Don’t You. You want to update Jim Kerr‘s timeless standard of new romantic with the voices of a female acappella group?! Don’t update it, don’t remix it, don’t touch it; just marvel at it and be in awe of it.
I’ve heard that originally, “Say Anything” was the film that Jesse wanted to show Beca as the movie with the best ending of all-time. Guess what? “SAY ANYTHING” IS MY VOTE FOR HAVING THE BEST MOVIE ENDING OF ALL-TIME!! Had they kept the original story line, I am quite sure my take on this film would have been drastically altered, positively. So as it stands with “The Breakfast Club”, eh.
Go to college, and stay there until you earned your degree; it should answer all your questions you had when you graduated from high school. And if it doesn’t, you need more college.
David W. Chien Movie Reviews 