Hitting The Usual Notes With Extra Personality
Maybe it's the Frasier-inspired snob in me, but when something captures the attention and admiration of my peers (late-teens/early-twentysomethings), I tend to avoid it and observe from a distance. However, this often doesn't last, and I eventually give-in. And I'll be damned if most of the time the masses were right.
Pitch Perfect really struck a chord with the culture when it hit theaters in the fall of 2012. I only recently saw it for the first time (in anticipation of Pitch Perfect 2), and I was delighted by how funny and fun the film proved to be. Directed by Jason Moore, written by Kay Cannon, and produced by Elizabeth Banks, Pitch Perfect is the story of an underdog group of misfits who must come together and climb their way to glory in the highly competitive world of collegiate a cappella. The framework is highly unoriginal, but with charisma and humor it transcends its generic trappings to become a delightful and sharp musical comedy.
The always winning Anna Kendrick plays Beca, a tough loner freshman who just wants to move to Los Angeles and start her career in music production (she creates mash-ups as a hobby). She arrives at the fictional Barden University as it's renowned female a cappella group, the Barden Bellas, are in the midst of recovery and rebuilding after a humiliating occurrence at the previous year's national championship (where Barden's other renowned a cappella group—the all-male Treblemakers—took home the trophy). Chloe (Brittany Snow), the Bella's co-leader, catches Beca shower-singing in a hilariously uncomfortable scene, and convinces Beca to audition for the group.
From there the story hits very familiar beats of a ragtag team struggling to work together and succeed. What helps Pitch Perfect to stand out is its wonderful cast of characters. Beca is surrounded not just by the perky Chloe but also the hysterically high-strung Aubrey (Anna Camp) and the unfiltered and delicately self-deprecating Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson). Camp plays Aubrey, the leader of the Bellas, as a sweetly dictatorial individual driven to succeed and overly dedicated to the use of aca-puns ("Aca-scuse me?"). Wilson walks a fine line with Fat Amy (the character refers to herself this way preemptively), never making her humor dependent on her appearance by extending beyond that one joke to be very funny in her own right. The rest of the Bellas are played by actresses more specifically inhabiting character types, but they nonetheless do so with humorous aplomb.
The rest of the Pitch Perfect world is filled out with some equally strong talent. Skylar Astin plays Jesse, a movie fanatic freshman member of the Treblemakers with an eye for Beca. Astin manages to make Jesse a nice guy without being annoying or boring, and he gets the audience to root for him even when Beca (with all of Kendrick's charms) rebuffs him. Also a Treblemaker is Adam DeVine's Bumper, the group's pompous and obnoxious leader. DeVine takes an incredibly smarmy character and makes you want to see more of him, let alone more of his interactions with Wilson, with whom he shares flirtatious barbs. Perhaps the most notable members of Pitch Perfect's supporting cast are comedy veterans John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks as a cappella color commentators who rarely seem smart or kind. Banks has hilarious delivery as the "straight man" of this already absurd duo, and Higgins manages to sound informed while spewing hugely insensitive remarks.
Kay Cannon's script demonstrates the sharp humor she used while writing for 30 Rock, but were the film just moderately funny, and the cast just passably charming, Pitch Perfect would still be a treat because of its music. All of the songs performed in the film are preexisting hits, and there's a perfect balance between the new and the old (one of the songs featured in the big finale will surely stir nostalgia in many viewers). The a cappella sound is itself a charming and wholly palatable one, especially as it allows for new takes on, and mash-ups of, well-known songs. Adding an additional layer of charm is that all of the actors appear to be doing their own singing, giving the whole affair a level of authenticity lost on films and shows where the performers are either dubbed or overly auto-tuned.
Whether you like underdog stories, good music, a cappella, or comedies—or you're just an Anna Kendrick fan—Pitch Perfect satisfies by being a film that's just plain fun. The humor is sharp, the cast is excellent, and the soundtrack will leave you humming the Cups song for far too many days. These elements cement Pitch Perfect as the apparent modern classic it's become and make its title quite apt.