Aca-bysmal

Rating: 1/10 (6 July 2013)

The single best thing I came away with after watching this movie was the wild relief I felt knowing that at least I didn't pay to subject myself to it. Some positive word-of-mouth made me curious enough to DVR it. An 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes got me to sit through the whole thing (albeit with a fair amount of time spent pressing fast-forward), just to see if there was something - ANYTHING - that could justify such an absurdly high score.
Short answer: There wasn't.
I'm given to assume it got its high rating only because the studio wouldn't allow any critics to screen it without first producing proof that they possessed an IQ of 70 or under.
If you read the IMDb synopsis, you know the whole movie. Actually, if you've ever seen any film starring characters under 25, you know the whole movie. There is not a single unique idea to be found within a light year of its sorry script. Comparisons to Glee are inevitable, but the truth is, PP is so utterly dull and witless, so aggressively devoid of joy or humor or anything akin to real human feelings, it makes the worst episode of Glee look like Singin' In The Rain by comparison.
Ostensibly a comedy, the film is mercilessly unfunny. Their idea of hilarity seems to run the gamut from projectile vomiting to juvenile puns like a singing group called "The Minstral Cycles" to inserting "aca" into every exclamatory phrase, like, "Aca-scuse me?!" and "Aca-believe it!". Isn't that funny?! Aren't you just gasping for breath from the amusement of it all? ...Yeah, me neither.
The characters, who are either grotesque, shopworn stereotypes or dull, cardboard cutout caricatures, flap about from scene to scene without ever even accidentally bumping into a real human attribute or emotion. They're also supposed to be in college, but the movie is so bent on regurgitating teen film tropes that nothing they say or do is indicative of a person over 15.
You know your film is bad when you feel compelled to reference other better films to move the story along or motivate your characters. For Pitch Perfect, that other better film is The Breakfast Club, which the 2D heroine's would-be 2D boyfriend regards as the most meaningful thing ever. There's a scene where said heroine (she had a name, but really, who cares?) is sitting on her bed watching the flick on her laptop, tears welling up in her eyes to indicate some grand epiphany ...which, under the circumstances, must be her devastated realization of what a GOOD teen movie looks like.
In sum, this is a film I'd recommend only for use as a torture device on terrorists. Badly written, directed and acted with characters as irritating as a rash and music numbers so awful, even the editor's attempt to slice them into bite-sized bits couldn't make them any more palatable. Funny only for people whose sense of humor atrophied at age five and entertaining only for people who've never seen a movie before. I give this a "1" only because IMDb does not allow me to score in negative numbers.