I don’t know anything about the TV show The Sing Off, or the world of modern a cappella music, so I can only react to this film as a typical teen music movie, blind to any injustice it may or may not be doing to the a cappella discipline as it exists now.  Pitch Perfect is far from a great film, but it is basically a fun film which I enjoyed way more than most of the stuff I’ve watched this year, especially crap that the critics actually liked (such as The Master.) Music movies, even if they are not great, are wonderful things simply because music is good for you. And it was nice to see a celebration of singing in particular, even if all the voices sounded a bit “processed” in a way that I could not quite put my finger on.

My main issues with Pitch Perfect are, first, they made little effort to develop characters in any way. They felt free to borrow all kinds of stuff from movies like Bring It On and Bandslam, but one thing they failed to borrow from those films was their attention to character development, which is what elevated them from silly teen movies to really wonderful films. Pitch Perfect is very much a Generation Y movie – emotionally it’s rather flat, and all the kids have that modern vapidness about them, almost like they’ve been lobotomized. Since the film’s main attraction is all the singing and dancing, it’s not a huge deal breaker, but it’s always disappointing when filmmakers take the easy way out.

My second issue with the film is that the musical numbers very much reflect the musical sensibility of modern pop music: all the songs in Pitch Perfect have the same soulless emotional tenor, plasticized timbre and completely uninteresting rhythmic structure, and all the singers have basically the same vocal style (call it pseudo blues belting, for lack of a better description.) It’s funny that they make such a big deal about that Simple Minds song, because the lead singer of Simple Minds would never get a record deal now – he’s too interesting and original sounding, he’d be stuck posting his mp3 files for free download on some internet site. Again, it was not a deal breaker for me – I can tolerate, and sometimes even enjoy, a certain amount of soulless modern pop music, and people who actually like the way modern pop music sounds will probably love the musical numbers. I will say that I think the best musical number was when Anna Kendrick takes over the group and they go out to the empty pool and sing that Just The Way You Are song – it’s a terrible, terrible song, but they managed to transform it in an interesting way.

But these gripes are mostly personal preference – music is what it is now, and kids are what they are now, nothing I can do about that! If you are looking for an uncomplicated diversion with lots of fun musical numbers, I would recommend Pitch Perfect.