Pitch Perfect (2012) - Get Pitch Slapped!

Rating: 7/10 (16 December 2012)

"Pitch Perfect" is that rare movie where by seeing the trailer, you can probably already tell that it's going to be one of those "Step Up"-type movies, following the predictable and formulaic storyline of competitive groups of a certain activity. Only this time, it involves professional singing. The movie stars Anna Kendrick stars as a young freshman at her new university who enjoys remixing music on her laptop, creating new and original fresh beats. She ends up joining this all-female acapella group that always sings the same boring songs over and over in almost every competition. In order to defeat a group of all-male acapella singers, Anna Kendrick is here to make everything more hip and edgy, giving more newer and fresher songs to the beat. Now, we have our movie filled with impressive acapella singing. I'm not really the demographic for these movies, so I had plenty of doubts before watching. But, as it turns out, I surprisingly had a real fun time with this movie. There are tons of great songs that made me tap my feet and sing along to. It's an entertaining film that knows it's general audience really well. Anna Kendrick is a great actress, and is always super likable in every film she's in. She's also really likable in this film, and she shines in nearly every scene, with her great singing talent to go along with it. Although this movie still does follow the formulaic romance plot, Kendrick delivers decent chemistry with Skylar Astin, a.k.a. "the Dane Cook look-a-like", who is very likable as a guy who dreams of being a movie composer, and falls for Kendrick after showing her the final scene in "The Breakfast Club". Those references to the film alone made me smile a lot. The film can either go any direction in the comedy department, at times it can be very funny, while some jokes fall flat. But the movie does have some entertaining musical numbers to help back up the film's quick 112-minute pace. Now, "Pitch Perfect" does suffer from a few gags involving projectile vomiting that wasn't really funny, a few annoying "d-bag" characters, and sometimes it gets really obnoxious when characters would often add the word "aca-" (prefix of "acapella") to almost every sentence. Although sharing a few funny lines, Rebel Wilson, who plays a character that decides to call herself "Fat Amy", so others won't say it behind her back, is sadly given little to say or do for the majority of the film. She sadly felt wasted in the film, and I expected more screen time from her. I also still stand by my opinion that the movie still has the formulaic plot told a thousand times before, knowing each certain plot point coming a mile away. However, "Pitch Perfect" is still a very enjoyable movie with fun musical numbers, great song, a likable performance from Anna Kendrick, and a few funny moments from here and there. I still wished that some problems could have been fixed, but overall, "Pitch Perfect" was a huge surprise, and it really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. "Pitch Perfect", in my review, "undeniably fun, but nothing remarkable".