A film review - Pitch Perfect

Starring:  Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow, Skylar Astin, Ben Platt, Anna Camp, Rebel Wilson, Ester Dean, Hana Mae Lee, Jinhee Joung and Adam DeVine

Director(s):  Jason Moore

Writer(s):  Kay Cannon (screenplay), Mickey Rapkin (book)

 

Perfect pitch is the ability of a musician to reproduce or identify a musical note, precisely without the benefit of any external reference.  “Pitch Perfect” is the story of singers with perfect pitch banding together at college to form a capella singing groups to compete in regional and national competitions.  Barden University is the home of two very successful groups.  The “Treble Makers” is an all-boy, mostly bad-boy wannabes who won last year’s national championships, after the all-girl Barden Belles had a major mishap during their final performance.  The woman who was so embarrassed there at Lincoln Center, “Chloe” (Brittany Snow) now holds the pitch pipe and she’ll be running the Belles in the upcoming school year, with assistance from the other returning member of last year’s team.  “Aubrey” (Anna Camp) is a great singer, but we find out later she has nodes on her vocal codes.

The girl that Aubrey most wants to get to join the Belles is “Beca” (Anna Kendrick).  Beca lives, breathes and sleeps music, remixing songs in the hope she can get them played on the college’s radio station.  She doesn’t want to be there getting an education, her plans call for her to go to L.A. to become a music producer.  But her father, a professor at Barden is insisting she attend college.  Considering that she’s stuck in a room with a Korean student, “Kimmy Jin” (Jinhee Joung) who actively dislikes her, there isn’t much to recommend her college experience. 

But when Aubrey hears Beca singing in the showers, she insists that she audition.  The auditions are a hoot, with the four a capella groups on campus listening to all the candidates singing the same song, and then choosing who they want to recruit.  The Treble Makers want “Jesse” (Skylar Astin) who wants to do it, but also wants to hook up with Beca.

The major conflict within the Belles, once their eclectic line-up is set, is that they sing only songs from women, and nothing modern or particularly upbeat.  That makes it hard to compete against the Treble Makers, who have hot, upbeat modern music with strongly choreographed routines.  Beca wants to change the musical selections of the Belles, but Chloe is firmly in charge and firmly opposed.

This is a very funny story that manages to include conflict, relationship issues on both the boyfriend/girlfriend level as well as the parent/young adult level.  The humor is constantly present but so are the story arcs of Beca, Jessie, “Fat Amy” (Rebel Wilson, who steals every scene she’s in) as well as Aubrey and Chloe.  In fact, all of the singers in the Belles are on journeys that they can only complete if they get to the finals in Lincoln Center and prevail.

The music is well-chosen.  Pitch Perfect makes fun of the entire a capella scene, much like Best in Show did the same for the kennel club competitions featuring purebred dogs.  The announcers here are right up there in terms of being hysterically funny ala Fred Willard in that great mockumentary.

Kendrick delivers the stand-out performance among everyone other than Rebel Wilson who has the potential to become a serious star.