There’s no non-commercial reason for Pitch Perfect 3 to exist: Its predecessor, Pitch Perfect 2, suffered from a pronounced case of sophomore slump, playing like a cover album of the original Pitch Perfect with one original song thrown in. But by Pitch Perfect 3 standards, it was a masterpiece.
The new third entry in the series isn’t interested in character development or logical storylines or anything resembling innovation. It’s lazy and limp and profoundly weird, and not in any meaningful way a “good movie.”
And yet there’s a silver lining.
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The Pitch Perfect franchise has always had a pretty good sense of humor about itself, manifesting in everything from the pair of over-the-top misogynist announcers John and Gail (John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks) to occasional recognition from the characters that a cappella may, in fact, not be the life-and-death matter the movies are obliged to make them out to be.
For Pitch Perfect 3, that self-awareness is dialed up to 10. It’s pretty aca-awful, but it makes a compelling case for its own thesis, which seems to be you people have got to let us stop making these movies. (The marketing campaign for the movie even relies on the slogans “Last Call Pitches” and “The Farewell Tour.”)
And it sure does make that case effectively.
Pitch Perfect 3 gets the band back together in despondent fashion
The first clue that we are definitely not supposed to take anything in Pitch Perfect 3 seriously is the film’s opening sequence, which ends with Beca (Anna Kendrick) and Amy/Patricia (Rebel Wilson) leaping off the back of a boat that’s bursting into flames. Isn’t this a movie about an a cappella group?
It is! Sort of. Most of the Barden Bellas we know from the movies graduated at the end of Pitch Perfect 2, and they’re all out trying to brave it in the real world. Beca is a struggling music producer living with Amy, who’s trying to get her “Fat Amy Winehouse” one-woman show (which she performs on sidewalks) off the ground, and Chloe (Brittany Snow), who spends her days with her hands up animals’ nether regions as a veterinarian’s assistant. The other Bellas are similarly unhappy with how things have turned out for them in the real world, wishing for their glory days as college a cappella champs.
The only Pitch Perfect 2 Bella who’s still at Barden College is Emily (Hailee Steinfeld), who has given up writing music in the face of her overstuffed schedule. When she and the current Bellas are invited to perform in Brooklyn, she invites her former groupmates to show up. As they gather at the bar afterward, despondent about their lives and nostalgic about the past, Aubrey (Anna Camp) launches a plan to get the band back together, so to speak.
Her father may never have been much of a part of her life, but he’s a big shot in the Army, and she finagles a USO invite for the Bellas to perform on a European tour. It’s the reunion of a lifetime, though it goes a little sour when Amy’s rapscallion father (John Lithgow) shows up, suddenly very interested in his estranged daughter’s life.
The film positions itself as the end of an era. Let’s keep it that way.
Pitch Perfect devotees show up to theaters expecting a few key ingredients: the main cast, a cappella covers of chart-topping pop songs, great hair, a few cute guys, suspiciously retrograde racial and gender politics, and, most importantly, a riff-off.
Pitch Perfect 3 knows this and messes just a tad with the formula. The cast is all here, but the movie keeps making self-aware cracks about “Jessica and Ashley,” two members of the group nobody’s ever talked to or about before and who have always been in the background. (They get a line apiece this time). They definitely all still have great hair and pop songs aplenty, and although the girls have broken up with their boyfriends from previous movies, there are a couple of cute guys to hang around: Matt Lanter, assigned by the Army to keep the girls safe, and Guy Burnet, who works with DJ Khaled. (Yes, that DJ Khaled, who plays a surprisingly large role in this movie as himself.)
And true to form, the musical performances in Pitch Perfect 3 are still plenty enjoyable, with songs including Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” Daya’s “Sit Still, Look Pretty,” and Sia’s “Cheap Thrills.” (Some controversy arose from the movie trailer’s inclusion of R. Kelly’s “Ignition Remix” in light of the mounting sexual abuse allegations against the singer; he still got paid, but for what it’s worth, the song is part of a riff-off and lasts about eight seconds.) The showstopper is George Michael’s “Freedom!” which the Bellas end up performing — and here’s the twist — backed by a full orchestra.
In Pitch Perfect, the innovation was livening up old-school a cappella by mixing a couple of songs together. In Pitch Perfect 2, it was the idea that an a cappella group could perform an original song, rather than relying on covers. Pitch Perfect 3, then, appears to be about embracing the rest of the musical equation — instruments — which manifests in the film’s only riff-off. That riff-off happens 20 minutes into the movie — I checked my watch — in what’s both a winking nod to fans (“I don’t know why we keep challenging people to these,” Chloe says. “We never actually win.”) and an effort to get it out of the way.
At first the Bellas resist the instruments played by the bands they’re competing against, but by the end of the movie they’ve embraced it. They’ve moved on. And “moving on” is the goal of Pitch Perfect 3. The film concludes with each girl taking a definitive new step in her life, including Lilly (Hana Mae Lee), who has been silent throughout the whole trilogy. John and Gail voice their astonishment over having finally gotten the “big ending” they’ve been waiting for. There’s a final performance and a montage and a couple of big jokes, and then it’s over. Pitch Perfect 3 is basically begging us not to ask for a fourth installment. I think it’s best we oblige.
Pitch Perfect 3 opens in theaters on December 22.
Image copyright Universal Image caption Pitch Perfect 3 reunites the members of the Barden Bellas singing troupe
Pitch Perfect 3 begins with a rendition of Britney Spears' song Toxic, which is exactly how some critics found it.
Yet other reviewers found plenty to love in the third instalment of the hugely popular franchise.
Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson and others reprise their roles in the latest film to explore the fortunes of the Barden Bellas, an all-girl a capella group.
John Lithgow and DJ Khaled have also joined the cast for Pitch Perfect 3, which is released in the UK today.
Its plot sees Beca (Kendrick), Fat Amy (Wilson) and Aubrey (Anna Camp) reunite with the rest of the group for a tour of US military bases in Europe.
Here's a breakdown of the reviews so far, starting with the positive ones.
The case for
Image copyright Universal Image caption Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson (centre) head the film's ensemble cast
According to The Guardian, Pitch Perfect 3 has the appeal of "a good Christmas pantomime", adding: "It looks like these performers are genuinely enjoying themselves, and it's infectious.
"The comedy rarely falters," writes Steve Rose, going on to praise the film's "choice one-liners... music-industry satire" and Wilson's "offbeat interjections".
Variety agrees, saying the franchise - expected to conclude with this instalment - "goes out on a winning note".
"The new film doesn't add anything revolutionary to the Pitch Perfect formula," writes Owen Gleiberman.
"But as directed by Trish Sie, the movie is bubbly, it's fast, it's hella synthetic-clever, and it's an avid showcase for the personalities of its stars."
Entertainment Weekly's Leah Greenblatt praises the cast's "nutty charisma", while The List's Katherine McLaughlin says the film delivers "cheesy and diverting fun".
Den Of Geek's critic, meanwhile, says it is "a satisfying end to a very fun set of films" and calls Wilson "ridiculous, hilarious and incredibly watchable".
The case against
Image copyright Universal Image caption John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks reprise their roles as pundits John and Gail
A very different verdict comes from the Telegraph's Tim Robey, who dismisses the film as "one of those here-we-go-again follow-ups-by-committee".
"It's a sure sign of the film's desperation that it begins and ends as a thuddingly tired action-comedy pastiche," Robey continues.
Empire's Helen O'Hara is also scathing, calling the film "a tired retread" that is "coasting on fumes" and which "only truly comes alive in its performance scenes".
"Even before the end credits show glimpses of a whole lot of scenes that never appear in the finished cut, you'll have the suspicion that director Trish Sie... ran into trouble somewhere," she writes.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption DJ Khaled appears as himself in the film
"Franchise fatigue is evident throughout this mechanical enterprise," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Frank Sheck, going on to call the film "soulless", "crass" and "beyond tiresome".
His write-up, though, is positively glowing compared to Scott Mendelson's in Forbes, which calls the film "a prototypical example of a strained threequel that finished its story the last time out".
"Pitch Perfect 3 is a monumental disappointment," he writes. "If you love this series, it's best to pretend that this instalment didn't happen."
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The Pitch Perfect franchise has come a long way since its halcyon days of university radio stations and collegiate a capella competitions, but the growth is not without its pains. Pitch Perfect 3 sees the Barden Bellas reuniting once more for a USO tour, as the excuses to get these now-adult women together to sing the requisite musical numbers become more and more outlandish.
In Pitch Perfect, Anna Kendrick’s Beca is desperate to escape the ivory tower to head to LA and begin her career as a music producer. At the start of Pitch Perfect 3, she is a music producer, but the reality doesn’t live up to the expectation, and so Beca quits her job and heads to Europe with her motley gang of singing weirdos to entertain the troops. It's Aubrey’s (Anna Camp) military dad who gets the girls the gig, however, and that tells you a lot about the stakes here. It's hard to root for an a capella group to get a much-coveted spot as the opening act of DJ Khaled's upcoming tour when they never seem to practice, perform, or in anyway work towards their apparent goal as serious musicians.
When the Bellas challenge the the other USO muscians, a girl rock band named Evermoist and a DJ named DragonNuts to their signature Riff Off, it's hard not to feel for the other musicians who just want to do their sound check and probably take a nap before their performance starts.
It's not just the competition that is half-heartedly constructed here. The stakes are so fleeting and nonsensical to mean almost nothing in Pitch Perfect 3. Will Beca get with the hot British music producer? Will Chloe (the always solid Brittany Snow) hook up with the hot American soldier? The movie doesn't pretend to care. It's all an excuse for the Bellas to dress up in militaristic and/or nationalistic outfits and sing some songs. But no one shows up to Pitch Perfect for the plot, and the movie itself seems to know that. At one point, Chloe exclaims, "I knew there would be a competition!" as if the script heard the Bellas’ earlier lament that there wasn't one and half-heartedly created it mid-movie to give the girls a tangible goal.
As with the previous movies, the best parts of the narrative and character development have little to do with a competition or potential love interests, but in the found family that is the Barden Bellas. Consider how damning it otherwise is that two of the main love interests from the previous movies are written out with a casual conversation in the first act. No one notices, and it's unlikely anyone in the audience will care either.
It's also unfortunate then that Pitch Perfect 3 feels the need to add more completely irrelevant male characters to take their place. Rather than focus solely on the relationships of the Bellas or give the film's characters of color more to do past the occasional racist joke, Pitch Perfect 3 instead spins wheels with the aforementioned dude love, or other undesired tangents like the introduction of John Lithgow as Fat Amy's (Rebel Wilson) estranged father. While Lithgow’s Aussie gangster character is wholly unnecessary and weirdly out-of-place in this film that is ostensibly about women singing, he does lead to an action scene involving Wilson on a yacht that is both completely ridiculous and utterly delightful. I'm not sure if Pitch Perfect 3 would have been a better movie if it had gone all in on the aca-tion front, but I do know that I want to see it.
Sadly, that version of the aca-triogy's final installment was never meant to be. Fingers crossed for the inevitable revival that will probably be announced in a scant few years. In the meantime, this is the supposed swan song for the popular trilogy. Come for the jokes, the song and dance numbers, and the female camaraderie. Stay for... well, for those things. That's what this movie has going for it.
