★★☆☆☆
Two Stars
Maybe it’s the luxury of having Out of the Blue serenade me almost every time I walk down Cornmarket, but the thought of a entire film dedicated to acapella didn’t exactly fill me with excitement. I prefer my instrument-free adaptations of 80s hits in short bursts when I’m slightly pissed at a college ball, but not stretched out to an hour and a half. The trailer for Pitch Perfect smacked of a feature-length episode of Glee, and as much as I once held a soft spot for Mr Schu & Co. (I really did; their mashup of Halo and Walking on Sunshine was spectacular), I’d left that behind when the obnoxious identity politics got too much and everyone kept harping on about how they were Born This Way.
The ‘this year’s Bridesmaids‘ hype also had me hopeful, but when producers feel the need to go as far as replicating the poster in order to hammer the message home, alarm bells should be ringing. The ensuing attempt to repackage the former for a younger demographic consists largely of ripping off Bring It On and hoping no-one will notice, from the lingo (‘cheerocracy’/’aca-scuse me?’) to the angsty protagonist who eventually realises that beneath the eyeliner and black nailpolish her and the preppy girls are one and the same. Yay, sisterhood!
Bridesmaids‘ use of gross-out comedy to prove that, yes, the girls can do it too, was brilliantly executed, but sometimes excessive vomit can be just that: to borrow a phrase from 10 Things I Hate About You (a teen movie Pitch Perfect would have done well to learn from), the ‘digestive pyrotechnics’ on display are unnecessary, bizarre, and dangerously close to Scary Movie territory.
To make matters worse, not only is the plot hopelessly cliched – it’s also riddled with offensive stereotypes. Stacie (Alexis Knapp) has a lot of sex and thus, of course, is also incredibly stupid, whilst Ester Dean’s Cynthia, the token lesbian, uses every available opportunity to letch upon her fellow singers. Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy is the film’s saving grace, singularly responsible for every memorable quote and, despite what the name would suggest, blessed with a comic genius that stretches far beyond jokes about her weight.
Despite my love of a good montage, no amount of jazzy edits can change the fact that Pitch Perfect feels like a lazy amalgamation of the best teen movies of the past two decades, but without any of the original spark. In a strangely meta moment Ashley Greene’s Beca declares that she “doesn’t like movies; the endings are predictable”. Nothing could have been more true.
