Like a movie made out of weaker Glee episodes

Rating: 4/10 (25 May 2015)

With the everywhere-talked-about release of the sequel to this 2012 movie, I thought it was high time to finally give the original a watch. It proved not a good idea. The humor in here basically includes the level of vomiting, terrible wordplays about penetration and menstrual cycles. This is a 105-minute movie directed by Jason Moore and written by Kay Cannon based on Mickey Rapkin's novel. Cannon returned for the sequel, Moore did not. Instead they went with Elizabeth Banks as director and she has a common past with Cannon, who is mostly famous for writing "30 Rock" episodes. I quite like this television series, so I was really baffled how bad her writing for this film here was. Anna Kendrick is an actress I actually quite like. She has charisma, looks and talent, a combination which is not too common these days. And she tried her best so that her performance could make up for many other flaws with this movie, but in the end it just wasn't enough. The script is just too bad. They start the film with giving Beca's main rival in the group a moment as embarrassing as it gets, so we could dislike her right away and prefer Kendrick's character. Rebel Wilson is like a younger Melissa McCarthy with the difference that she is entirely unfunny. I mentioned bad wordplays earlier and there are more of these. The repeated use of "aca-scuse me" was a negative highlight. Another flaw with this film was the ridiculous idea to include a guidebook according to which the singers were not allowed to have relationships with the guys from the rivaling men-only singers group.
I said in the title that there are some connections with Glee and it is true. They picked band members of all kinds of ethnicities, of all kinds of sexual preferences and of all kinds of body shapes, only they did not elaborate on it any further really. Basically, we know nothing about any of the characters except Kendrick's and that is quite an achievement for a film which has so many characters and runs for not too much under two hours. A very very negative achievement. One of the very few positive things about this film is the music, which wasn't as bad as the rest really. However, the band's final performance which apparently blew everybody away did not particularly wow me. I was pretty disappointed by this film. I hope Kendrick's next projects will be better. She showed us a couple times in the past that she is one of the best actresses from her generation, but movies like this one here do not do her justice. Not even close. Not recommended.