Taglines: Get Pitch Slapped.
Barden College sports four different a cappella singing groups, the all-male Treblemakers and the all-female Bellas, who are the most antagonistic toward each other of the four, making it into the national finals of the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCAC), held annually at Lincoln Center in New York City.
The Bellas are the first all-female group to make the finals, but what strides they make forward for all women singing take two major steps backward at the finals with tired, uninspired arrangements solely of twentieth century girl songs, and an unfortunate incident by their controlling lead, Aubrey Posen, whose choice of singers has to be clones of her pretty self.
As such, Aubrey and co-lead Chloe Beale have to rebuild the group from scratch for the upcoming season, which will be difficult due to the notoriety from the incident at the finals. Meanwhile, Beca Mitchell is a reluctant freshman at Barden, her Barden professor father paying for her tuition for one year just so that she can be exposed to college life. Her reluctance is that she is a loner, she preferring to work on her music mixes in solitude in her want to be a Los Angeles DJ or music producer.
Although she is made aware of the Bellas in her wanderings around campus, Beca has no intention of auditioning, until she meets Chloe, who encourages her to do so. Beca is accepted with a more diverse group than has ever been the Bellas, but Beca and Aubrey end up clashing over Aubrey’s direction for the group, which she mistakenly believes is the winning direction. One of Aubrey’s other zero tolerance policies is no sex with any Treblemaker.
Although Beca has no intention of breaking that policy, she does admit that one of the few people on campus she has befriended beyond the other women in the Bellas is fellow music lover and singer Jesse Swanson, an aspiring film score composer and a freshman Treblemaker. Beca will have to decide how far to break out of her shell and stay true to her own musical leanings, which if she does so means taking on Aubrey for some control of the group. What Beca decides may also affect what happens in her friendship with Jesse.
Pitch Perfect is a 2012 American comedy film directed by Jason Moore and written by Kay Cannon. It features an ensemble cast, including Anna Kendrick, Skylar Astin, Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Brittany Snow, Hana Mae Lee, Alexis Knapp, Ester Dean, Adam DeVine, Ben Platt, John Michael Higgins, and Elizabeth Banks. The film is loosely adapted from Mickey Rapkin’s non-fiction book, titled Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory. Filming concluded in December 2011, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The film premiered in Los Angeles on September 24, 2012 and was released on September 28, 2012 in the United States. The film received positive reviews from critics and became a sleeper hit, earning over $115 million worldwide. It is the first film in the film series and was followed by two sequels, Pitch Perfect 2 (2015) and Pitch Perfect 3 (2017).
Film Review for Pitch Perfect
You have to hand it to “Pitch Perfect.” It’s a twentysomething song-and-dance movie built around rival a cappella groups. That’s more exciting than dueling string quartets, I suppose — but no, the quartets would be performing better material. In the world of this film’s Barden College, a cappella seems to rank above football in extracurricular activities, and as nearly as I recall, the only character ever seen in a classroom is Beca’s father, the teacher.
He teaches philosophy and despairs of his daughter Beca (Anna Kendrick), who dreams of moving to L.A. and making it in show business. He makes a deal: She sticks out college for one year, and then she can go to L.A. if she still wants to. Oh, and she must join at least one afterschool activity.
This is some school. On Activity Day, a male a cappella group poses carefully on the campus and bursts periodically into song. There is also a female group, the Bellas, although they’re under a cloud after their lead singer suffered an unfortunate attack of vomiting in the national finals. And not just ordinary vomiting, but Movie Projectile Vomiting, which in its velocity and gallons of content resembles an attack by an alien.
Beca is recruited into the Bellas by its star, Chloe (Brittany Snow), while they are both naked in a shower, which makes this more intriguing than your average a cappella recruitment. Well, at least it’s an afterschool activity. Soon she finds herself up against Aubrey (Anna Camp), the group leader who has rigid opinions about their performances.
Another new recruit is Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), who explains she calls herself that because she knows that’s what people call her behind her back. Rebel (her real name) plays a character so ebullient, unstoppable and raucous that she steals every scene she’s in and passes the Character Name Test. This refers to our ability to remember the names of a movie character for more than 10 minutes after the movie has ended. Fat Amy, I will remember. Can you, even at this point in the review, recall who Chloe is?
The plot interlinks the Bellas’ progress toward the national finals in New York City’s Lincoln Center with a sorta romance between Beca and Jesse (Skylar Astin), a DJ for the campus radio station; much in their relationship depends on his belief that “The Breakfast Club” has the greatest single final scene in the history of the cinema. Beca doesn’t share his enthusiasm for the John Hughes movie, even though she’s in a movie that would dearly love to be by Hughes, who would find more fraught material than Beca’s kitchen table conversations with her dad about why he divorced her mom — a plot thread that leads nowhere.
Strange supporting roles are played by John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks, as a team of commentators who function somewhere between play-by-play announcers and the judges on “American Idol.” The Higgins performance owes more than a little to Fred Willard’s unforgettable dog show commentary in “Best in Show,” but it was clear that Willard was part of a telecast. The Higgins and Banks characters look like they’re sitting behind a desk in the audience and just … what? Broadcasting? Talking out loud?
Another inexplicable character is Lilly (Hana Mae Lee), a shy Asian girl who cannot sing or even speak loudly enough for anyone to hear her. How did she survive her audition? Still, Anna Kendrick is adorable, a young version of the angelic Marisa Tomei. And it must be said that the Bellas are a first-rate group, with choreography so crisp that Bob Fosse couldn’t have drilled them to move more precisely.
You may be reminded of a Broadway musical. Certainly the choreography is way over the top of other championship a cappella teams on You Tube. And if I mistake not, the soundtrack sneaks in some percussion and other stray sounds that might get the Bellas outlawed in a real a cappella competition.
Pitch Perfect (2012)
Directed by: Jason Moore
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow, Rebel Wilson, Skylar Astin, Anna Camp, Alexis Knapp, Ester Dean, Hana Mae Lee, Kelley Jakle, Wanetah Walmsley, Shelley Regner, Caroline Fourmy
Screenplay by: Kay Cannon
Production Design by: Barry Robison
Cinematography by: Julio Macat
Film Editing by: Lisa Zeno Churgin
Costume Design by: Salvador Pérez Jr.
Set Decoration by: David Hack
Art Direction by: Jeremy Woolsey
Music by: Christophe Beck, Mark Kilian
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual material, language and drug references.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: September 28, 2012
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