thoughts on Pitch Perfect

The premise: Barden College has an all-female a cappella group called the Bellas. They are not as good as the all-male group the Treble Makers, but they have made it to Nationals, and we later learn that they are a pretty tough group to get into...until Aubrey (Anna Camp) projectile vomits all over the stage during their Nationals performance. Now, they're the laughingstock of their school, and they have to take who they can get for their group, including a girl who refers to herself as "Fat Amy" (Rebel Wilson, a.k.a. Kristen Wiig's weird roommate from Bridesmaids); a girl who touches herself inappropriately regardless of what song the group is singing; a girl who speaks so softly you can barely understand her (though when you can, you hear that she is saying things like, "I start fires for fun" and "I've done time in the joint"); and our main character, Beca (Anna Kendrick), who really wants to be a D.J. (the kind that produces music, not the Rick Dees kind, as she has to explain to her Comparative Literature professor father), but whose father is making her go to college, at least for a year. Along the way, Beca falls for a member of the Treble Makers (though the Bellas are forbidden from letting said Treble Makers "penetrate" them, and though Beca has had trouble getting close to people since her parents' divorce); there are many musical numbers; and, at one point, there is more projectile vomiting, which one girl literally does snow angels (vomit angels?) in.

Sound goofy? Sure, it is. It's also a lot of fun. Here are the things I liked about it:

1) the musical numbers, duh. There are performance numbers, but there is also this bizarre sing-off between the four a cappella groups on campus that culminates in the Bellas harmonizing on "No Diggity," as well as a truly joyful bus ride sing-along to "Party in the U.S.A." Aubrey wants the girls to stick with what they've always done (bland numbers like Ace of Base's "The Sign" and the Bangles' "Eternal Flame"), but the thing is, they're not the Bellas they once were, in looks or personality, and she eventually accepts that they're at their best when they're all being themselves. I know, that's a pretty cheery little message, but...

2)...it's not NEARLY as preachy as Glee, which I appreciated. As many of you know, I liked Glee a lot when it first came out, but eventually came to find it frustrating and offensive for a bunch of reasons. I won't enumerate those reasons here (many of you have heard it all before), but what was refreshing about Pitch Perfect is this: the only person in this movie who thinks a cappella singing is dorky is Beca, and she comes around. The Glee kids were dealing with hatred from the other students and even teachers and administrators LONG after they should have earned everyone's respect, and all of the "everyone hates us/we're such outsiders/the school's going to shut our club down and give all our funding to the Cheerios" business took away from what the show was at its best, and what Pitch Perfect is: a story about a group of kids who want to sing some fun songs and maybe win some awards while dealing with growing up, forming friendships, falling in love, and all that jazz. I dug that. I also dug...

3)...the fact that Pitch Perfect (mostly) avoids cliches. Yes, Fat Amy's weight and another character's lesbianism are sometimes played for laughs in ways that I sometimes felt a bit uncomfortable with. However. Here are some things that I assumed would happen, but did not: Beca and her love interest, Jesse, both have internships at a radio station. They have a boss who is attractive and slightly older than them. At one point, he offers Beca a D.J. shift that she has to turn down because of an a cappella competition. Now, I assumed from the moment that we met this boss that Beca would go for him even though Jesse clearly liked her from the beginning; that the boss would be a jerk about her being in an a capella group; that she would eventually have to choose between him and Jesse, as well as her D.J. dreams and her newfound love for a cappella singing; and that the movie would play it like she was being all morally superior for choosing Jesse and the a cappella group. None of this happens. Her boss appreciates her music producing skills without ever making a pass at her, and he still gives her future D.J. shifts even though she has to turn down the initial offer because of the competition. Isn't that surprising, reasonable, nice, and oh, I don't know...REALISTIC? Good job, Movie. You pleasantly surprised me.

4) On top of all of this good stuff, the movie all comes together with a musical number at Nationals that is so good, you almost don't even care whether the Bellas win or not, and the movie doesn't put a lot of emphasis on that, either, because...when you give a performance that is so good that you have all of Lincoln Center, including your competition, on its feet, it almost doesn't matter.

It's a fun movie, everyone. I'd definitely recommend.