![]() The boys taunt the girls with a version of Toni Basil's ebullient cute-guy anthem "Mickey" the girls rejoinder with a few flirty-cool lines from "Like a Virgin." The sequence is ridiculous and buoyant, a wonderful example of what can happen when a movie momentarily forgets all the things - snarky, irreverent, of-the-moment - it's desperately trying to be. One of the finest sequences is a "riff-off" between the boys and the girls, a West Side Story-style showdown that plays out with shards of songs instead of switchblades. ![]() The script features some killer lines, most of them slung by Wilson, who has a great deal of appealing swagger: At one point she approaches two slouching nerds wearing hoodies and asks outright: "What are you two talking about? Dressing for comfort?"Īnd then there's the singing, which, at its best, comes off as glorious and casual even if it's really the result of strict vocal discipline. ![]() (The movie's director is Jason Moore, who, in addition to having episodes of Everwood and Dawson's Creek under his belt, earned a Tony Award nomination in 2004 for directing Avenue Q.) It moves at a clip, a sprightly relay race between a dozen or so mellifluous performers. Beca, a freshman at Barden University, is cajoled into joining The Bellas, her schools all-girls singing group. And somehow, despite her initial lack of enthusiasm, she's recruited to try out for one of the school's singing groups, the Barden Bellas, a prissy bunch of girls who are actually ruthless warriors when it comes to a cappella singing competitions.Īnd yet Pitch Perfect offers some unapologetically pleasing moments, including a crisply edited audition scene that owes nothing - thank God - to the protracted sadism of reality TV singing shows. Beca is supposedly a misfit - we're clued in by her multiple ear piercings, her ambition to be a DJ or a record producer, and her smattering of tattoos - and she's still smarting over her parents' divorce, which means she's prickly toward her professor dad (John Benjamin Hickey) and her fellow students alike.īut in addition to having a killer knack for mixing beats, Beca can sing beautifully. That may be too much for one modest comedy to carry, but one thing's for sure: Pitch Perfect doesn't skimp on the singing.Īnna Kendrick stars as Beca, a newly matriculated student at fictional Barden University. Pitch Perfect grossed 65 million in North America and 50.3 million in other territories for a total gross of 115.4 million since release, against a 17 million budget. Pitch Perfect banks on that magic - the purely human wizardry of a cappella singing - though it also attempts to be several other things: a mild gross-out comedy, a paean to the awkward early stages of new love, a Mean Girls-style riff on campus hierarchies. When it's done right, there's nothing so miraculous as the sound of human voices blending into a creamy swirl of color, with neither the help nor the distraction of musical accompaniment.
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