At Barden University there are several singing groups. Most notable are The Bellas (an all-female acapella group) and the The Treblemakers (an all-male acapella group). In the opening sequence, The Bellas and the The Treblemakers are rivals who made it to Nationals and are performing their musical numbers. Too bad an unfortunate vomit-related incident causes The Bellas to lose the competition and become the laughing-stock of their school.
Fast forward to the beginning of the next school year. The Bellas are looking to recruit new talent and overcome their disastrous performance at Nationals. However, they are having a hard time finding females who fit their perfect mold. They end up recruiting Beca (Anna Kendrick), a freshman who spends a lot of time on her laptop creating mash-ups of songs, Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), who has a knack for saying inappropriate yet hilarious stuff, Lilly (Hana Mae Lee), who looks like a Japanese anime character come to life and speaks in a very soft whisper but says the most outrageous things (when she actually speaks), and several others. The leaders of The Bellas are Aubrey (Anna Camp) and Chloe (Brittany Snow). Aubrey is very stuck in her ways. She is determined to perform the exact same routine and will not deviate from this at all. Of course, this leads to conflict among the group.
Also new to Barden University is Jesse (Skylar Astin, who looks like a mash-up of Ben Savage, Dane Cook, and Zachary Levi) who works at the university radio station with Beca (and is the love interest of the film) and his roommate Benji (Ben Platt) who is a super duper ultra mega “Star Wars” fan.
Fans of “Glee” will definitely enjoy “Pitch Perfect”. It’s like they took a whole season of “Glee” and crammed it into a two-hour movie. Nothing felt rushed though, everything played out naturally. I did notice that none of the characters spent time in class or studying. I guess the makers of the film felt that would drag the movie out longer. It really didn’t matter to the plot anyways.
I really enjoyed Elizabeth Banks (Effie Trinket ya’ll!!) and John Michael Higgins as the singing competition judges. Their inappropriate banter was hilarious.
I spent a lot of the movie wondering why The Bellas and The Treblemakers didn’t team up to make one unstoppable group. They did that on “Glee!”
With great music, snappy dialogue, and fierce musical numbers, “Pitch Perfect” is Glee’s older, more risqué sister.
