With the popularity of Glee, it made sense that it was only a matter of time until competitive a cappella hit the big screen. The first trailer I saw for Pitch Perfect definitely perked my interest as I thought it looked like it had the makings for a funny comedy and I knew it was one that would in the end no matter what be right up my wife's alley. Pitch Perfect deals with the two main acappella groups from Barden University, the Treble Makers and the Barden Bellas. The Bellas are out to redeem themselves after an epic failure at the finals for the acappella championships, and end up with quite the rag tag group of misfits to make up the group the following year. Our main character Beca (Anna Kendrick) is the alterna-girl who is reluctantly at college because her dad is a professor at Barden and he believes the college education is vital, but her real dream is to be producing music in Hollywood. Her dad finally agrees that if she joins one of the campus groups and still does not love her college experience he will help her move to Los Angeles and of course she ends up loving the group of misfits she joins. One can not help, but truly enjoy this movie and was a lot of fun to watch in the end.
Anna Kendrick in the role of Beca really performs well and she shows that she is not only a big star in the making, but is a star now. Kendrick lights up the screen and plays her role not only well, but the chemistry she has onscreen with all of the other characters is something rarely seen in a comedy. Skylar Astin in the role of Jesse, Beca's love interest gives a pretty solid performance in the first role I have seen him in. He plays the honest guy very well and is truly believable in the role and I felt like he not only connected with Beca, but the audience as well. Rebel Wilson though in the role of Fat Amy nearly steals the show with her great delivery and the comedy she brings to the movie. She took her role and completely ran with it and did not back down for one second. The rest of the supporting cast all give good performance as well. The only character that I really had a hard time with was Brittany Snow, I felt like she was kind of a confusing role and while she had a couple of great lines, she was just not what I expected from her to give in a role. I felt her character could have been taken out completely and it would not have changed the movie at all.
The story for Pitch Perfect was simple and even formulaic with just a couple of tweaks. The main change between Pitch Perfect and other competition based movies is rather then the rival being from a different school the rival is actually a rival acappella group within the same University, and the rivalry within the a capella world ends up being an all male group vs an all female group. Really the story works and did not take away from where the movie was taking the audience, but the big part of the story is it really serves to be what ties each song into the next song section between the acappella groups. The story set out to do precisely what it needed to do and nothing more then that. With the way the story was ingrained with the music it really helped to keep the pacing of the movie moving without feeling rushed. While there were parts where I think they could of slowed the pace down to let everything simmer and develop more I felt the pace did not move too fast so as to make you go wait what just happened.
The character of Fat Amy for the most part really carries the comedy in Pitch Perfect. While she is a bigger person, I think the fact though she owns it onscreen and seems to have great confidence in herself. She had me nearly rolling on the floor laughing throughout. Pitch Perfect also used the counter thoughts for what someone normally would think of when it comes to acappella competitions. The fact of the Treble Makers being the "Bad Boys" really makes you laugh throughout the movie. To go along with the comedy of acappella the hosts of the Finals competition are merely there for comments meant to be funny. Everything they say is really joke set-ups between the two of them. One of my favorite scenes that happens in Pitch Perfect is that of the Riff Off. While it has its funny parts throughout the Riff Off the best part of the Riff Off is when Kendrick's character jumps into the Riff Off with the rap from the song "No Diggity." It has been awhile since I have seen a comedy movie that I have laughed so hard in throughout most of the movie. A lot of the times I find movies like this to have all of the funny parts just in the trailer then the rest of the movie is boring throughout, and luckily Pitch Perfect did a great job at completely avoiding this pitfall.
Pitch perfect was a comedy that I figured would eventually come about because of the popularity of acappella due to Glee. Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson gave great performances and I was not sure if Kendrick could shine and really handle being the star, she really showed that she is a star and will be a big star in time. The story served to basically just move from song to song, but it worked. The songs worked and I would have loved to have heard more mash-up songs. I am giving Pitch Perfect three and a half buckets of popcorn out of five. This is a movie that is well worth seeing in the theater, especially if you want a night of laughing.
-The Movie Man
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