Who knew there was this much fun left in glee clubs so long after Glee jumped the shark?
Pitch Perfect is a frothy, funny, dizzy and derivative farce set in the competitive world of college a cappella groups Glee without the soap opera or the sex, but stuffed with comic caricatures, hilarious one-liners and blessed with a cast thats up to a little song-and-dance.
Sweet little Anna Kendrick, usually cast as too-young/in-over-her-head (Up in the Air, What to Expect When Youre Expecting) plays the cynical, rebellious would-be DJ and record producer who heads to Barden College at her dads insistence.
Thats where she hooks up with the Barden Bellas, a hyper-competitive chorus that lives for the chance to take down a cappellas national collegiate champs, the frat-boyish nerds of Treble Makers.
The Bellas don sexy stewardess uniforms circa 1966 and sing dated pop tunes in close harmony set to fetching choreography. Imperious Aubrey (Anna Camp) and perky Chloe (Brittany Snow) run the skinny-girls-on-parade show.
But this years version of The Bellas has a black lesbian belter (Ester Dean), an oversexed bombshell (Alexis Knapp), a disturbed, whisper-voiced Asian coed (comic Hana Mae Lee) and Fat Amy, a big, blowsy Tasmanian devil with an Orthodox Jew pony-tail rendered in broad, boisterous strokes by Rebel Wilson.
Beca (Kendrick), borderline Goth girl, fan of hip hop and mistress of her own remixes, doesnt exactly fit in with these misfits.
There are auditions, rehearsals (done in goofy, well-cut montages), contests and a riff-off, where the various groups spontaneously tear through the modern pop catalog, from Kelly Clarkson to Bruno Mars.
The big contest formula means that this is a lot like every recent music or dance film, from Drumline to You Got Served. And its so much like Glee that they even insert a Glee joke or two, casting the bespectacled Christopher Mintz-Plasse in a big cameo thats plainly meant to remind us of the kid in the wheelchair from the TV show.




