BEFORE: This is one of those dual-purpose films - I'm finishing off the music-themed chain tonight, but I'm also starting the "Back to School" chain. Quite timely, no?
Linking from "Cabaret", and I can't quite believe this, but Michael York was also in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" with John Benjamin Hickey, who appears in "Pitch Perfect". My mind is officially blown.
THE PLOT: Beca, a freshman at Barden University, is cajoled into joining The Bellas, her school's all-girls singing group, injecting some much needed energy into their repertoire.
AFTER: There's just no way around this - if I had ever played a real sport, like football, then I would bring some special knowledge with me when I watch a film about football. Or if I were a fisherman and watched "The Perfect Storm", I might have some insights into what that film got right and what it got wrong. So tonight I have to talk about my experiences singing in a cappella groups. One group in high school, and two after college - I sang in the NYU chorale, but that was completely different. In high school I sang whatever they told me to, but a concert I went to featuring two groups, the Bobs and the Nylons, completely changed my outlook, and made me want to be a singer. I got really lucky when my voice changed, and there turned out to be a lack of bass singers in the world, and that helped.
So, I've lived the life - I've arranged music for 5-part harmonies, I've hung out with other vocal nerds, I even went to an a cappella convention or two, before I discovered Comic-Con. And for the most part, I found the amateur and semi-pro network of groups to be a supportive, nurturing bunch, even at competitions. Sharing arrangements, getting each other gigs, just getting together and harmonizing - sure, there must be some rivalries, but it's not nearly as cutthroat as this film would have you believe.
For starters, if a college has more than one singing group, they're likely to be supportive of each other, not rivals. The group's rivals should be at a DIFFERENT school. This film treats the groups at one school like the fraternities in "Animal House", because a film demands conflict, and that's apparently the only way that college kids act. The "riff-off" scene in particular shows different vocal groups battling like the gangs from "West Side Story" - but how would that even work? Why would the group that's singing stop, just to let a person from the other group interrupt them?
Maybe a sports analogy is better, because the film shows 10 girls with different backgrounds and talents coming together to form a team, and compete in a challenge. In that sense, this film is no different from "Hardball" or "The Mighty Ducks" (or, since one girl has a freak illness that makes her sing better, perhaps "Rookie of the Year"). But a singing competition and a sporting event are quite different - so it's sad that some writer couldn't take the time to learn how an a cappella competition really works. For starters, there are no "color commentators" who talk during the songs...
There are plenty of other inconsistencies - for example, the Bellas don't perform modern songs, just tired arrangements from the 80's and 90's. To fall back on a sports analogy, this would be like a football team taking the field after deciding to never throw a forward pass. Nope, we want to play football like they did in 1910! Well, props for your authenticity, but clearly you also have no desire to win any games. And then we have to hear the SAME argument about 20 times about whether or not it's OK to do modern songs. Clearly it is, because the other groups are doing it - the a cappella revolution already happened, like 20 years ago, so why are we still debating it? Any group that refuses to update its song list wouldn't (and shouldn't) still be singing.
This forces some of the characters to spin on a dime - so, it's not OK to sing modern songs, until suddenly it is. The "quiet" girl is quiet, umm, until she's not? (And how did she pass the audition, anyway?) We're going to only do certain dance moves, until the end when we suddenly all know other moves somehow...
NITPICK POINT #1: If you've ever watched "The Sing-Off", and seen the background pieces they do on the groups as they're learning the songs, you might appreciate the amount of work that goes into making an a cappella arrangement. Arranging music is hard (and even if people are good at improvising, from my experience there simply must be sheet music, it's how arrangers and singers communicate) and logically, arranging a mash-up would be twice as hard. You can't just say the name of two songs to a group and expect everyone to instantly know what to do. Only in movies, I guess.
NITPICK POINT #2: They're called Regionals because they feature the best team from each school in a particular region. That's right, TEAM, not teams. ONE team, the best team, per school. And if only one team from each school can make it to Regionals, then logically winning Regionals puts that team into the state finals, and so on. For two teams from the SAME school to face each other in some kind of Nationals? Impossible. If this had been merely a competition to determine the best singing group on campus, that would make more sense. I don't care what plot twist you try to pull, no two teams from the same school can compete against each other in Nationals. Period. Where are the teams from the other 49 states? I guess they didn't show up?
For all of these reasons, the film as a whole just felt half-written, or perhaps half thought out. I also got a feeling that a lot of the lines were improvised, which is great if the actors can come up with something better than what was written, but not so great if they're doing the writers' jobs for them. For example, in the last scene, last year's winning group gets to pick the song the newbies have to audition with, and just as they're about to announce it - cut to credits. So, we never get to learn what song they picked? Then why even include that scene at all? Logically, the credits should have featured good and bad auditions of that song, but to cut away, and then never follow through - it makes no sense.
The final showdown concert was quite good - except for the unlikeliness of who competed against who. I mean the arrangements and performances were good, but not good enough to make up for the 90 minutes leading up to it. They should have either played the movie straighter, or more ridiculous like "Dodgeball", but the region in between didn't quite work.
Also starring Anna Kendrick (last seen in "50/50"), Skylar Astin (last seen in "Taking Woodstock"), Anna Camp, Brittany Snow (last seen in "Hairspray"), Rebel Wilson (last seen in "Bridesmaids"), Ben Platt, Adam DeVine, Elizabeth Banks (last seen in "Our Idiot Brother"), John Michael Higgins (last seen in "Fun With Dick and Jane"), Ester Dean, Hana Mae Lee, with cameos from Donald Faison, Jason Jones, Joe Lo Truglio (last seen in "Wanderlust"), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (last seen in "Kick-Ass").
RATING: 5 out of 10 cardio workouts
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