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! 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.
But its not the plot or even the singing that sells Pitch Perfect. Writer Kay Cannon and her cast pepper this thing with zingers. Its all a cappella puns a ca-people mixed up in a cappolitics where a girl could get pitch slapped.
Wilson, of Bridesmaids and Bachelorette, lands a laugh every time she opens her mouth. And the whispering Hana Mae Lee reveals, with convulsively funny results, the dark layers to her demure, pony-tailed singer whose every soft-spoken word is disturbing. (I set fires to feel joy.)
Theres even a broadcast team for the contests, an add-on that produces double entendres and belly-yuks from John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks as two aged ex-gleeks with many a snarky take on todays singers.
They pitched everything but the kitchen sink into Pitch Perfect Donald Faison (Scrubs) shows up with an aged-out-of-college singing group that neither advances the story nor adds laughs.
The romance side of things (Skyler Astin plays Becas love interest) is a non-starter, and the love interests magician/ Star Wars freak roommate (Ben Platt) is plainly an afterthought. The villainous singer Bumper (Adam DeVine) may get sued for ripping off Jack Blacks shtick and demeanor.
But Kendrick never lets Beca become a rebel girl cliche. And Rebel Wilson never lets Pitch Perfect go more than a few bars between laughs. As pieced-together-by-committee as this sometimes feels, Perfect is never off-key.


A night of swan songs on ‘SNL’

