Pitch Perfect

Yes I saw it.  Don't worry my man card was taken long ago.

A CASPOILERS
So you know something thats weird it "took off"?  A capella singing.  Not just a capella singing, but a capella songs that mashup your favorite songs together.  Don't get me wrong, I love the quirky a capella groups.  I've been listening to them since Freshman Year of college.  I have no idea when this genre became mainstream enough to have entire movies based around it..  Most likely Glee is to blame (as it is for most things wrong in the music industry).

With Glee being a smash hit, other shows and movies in the genre have been churned out.  None have really captured the teeny-boppers, except for this one.    I had seen the trailers and immediately thought "Glee: College Edition", instantly dismissing it.  Well then I started teaching this year. Every middle school aged girl I came in contact with was attempting the Cup Song.  What the fuck is the cup song?  Did you ever play the "cup game" at camp where you have to in rhythm slam cups around?  Its the same thing except you sing while doing it.  How...odd a thing to catch on.  But let's look at the movie, was it any good?

The plot is pretty simple.  Alternative DJ (because mashups aren't mainstream yet...) Becca is given an ultimatum by her college professor Dad that she has to join a club and attempt to enjoy it.  If she does that and still hates college, he'll fund her to move to LA to "break" into the music biz (once again, as a mashup DJ).  Desperately, she finds a disgraced girl's only a capella group (Barden Bellas) who is completely focused on beating the asshole male a capella group the Treblemakers.  She doesn't get along with the powers that be and you get your usual girly conflicts.  Power struggles, are you screwing the right boys, are you being repressed by everyone around you.  Plots don't get more cliche than this.

The music is nothing too special as I feel like I've heard most of the mashups they attempted before.  Nothing sounds particularly awful, most of it actually sounds pretty good.  They did borrow the cup song from Youtube though so I'm skeptical that the movie is 'original'.  For a movie the music is one of the main draws, I was slightly disappointed in this.  I also know it takes a while for movies to come out and I'm late on this movie, but the music felt dated for how many pop songs they used.  Its hard to keep it current with production delays and all that.

But despite all this bitching...this movie snuck up on me.  It actually was pretty funny and had some hidden truth in it.  Anyone who's ever been on a "recreational" team who takes themselves way too seriously (for any activity, mine was basketball) will relate to the inter-team relations.  Some of the less prevalent members of the team are actually pretty hysterical, especially the Asian psychopath and Fat Amy (whose best lines were in the trailer but she's still funny as fuck).  I dont know if the jokes were written or improved, and its nothing you haven't seen before: but it makes me laugh.  The announcers of the a capella competition are washed up former competitors who are hysterical every time they speak and the movie wisely understates them.

Basically, this movie is nothing new.  It's been seen before.  Its mindless, vapid, and doesn't make a lot of sense.  But the dialogue and characters are actually pretty entertaining.  For a just under 2 hour movie, surprisingly it doesn't drag and if you're into this stuff at all (competitive singing), it's pretty damn fun.  I'm as surprised as anyone that I liked this movie.  Just don't think about it, enjoy, and laugh at the stupidity.

You may now call me a faggot for liking a movie made for teenage girls,
-Oz