#1 Pitch Perfect

It's aca-awesome!

Went to the cinema to see The Impossible but it was sold out so I ended up at Pitch Perfect instead, which was pretty much at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum from what I'd planned but howanever! It was FUN.

Loner wannabe music producer Beca (Anna Kendrick) accidentally ends up in the all-female Barden Belles acapella group in her freshman year at Barden College, where the all-male Treblemakers are still lording it over the ladies after an unpleasant vomiting incident ended the Belles' hopes at a victory the previous year. The Belles aim for absolute perfection, making their singing rigid and boring. Beca, who likes to remix music, ends up remixing the Belles' music, falling in love and finding herself. And there's a LOT of singing.

What saves Pitch Perfect from being another High School Musical or later-season Glee is that it's actually very funny. The various oddballs in the Belles and Treblemakers are all weirdly funny, from the perky perfectionist Aubrey to the teeny-voiced psycho Lilly to the hyper-confident Fat Amy (standout Rebel Wilson), and Beca is played by Anna Kendrick so she is wonderfully awkward and mocking and adorable. And she also raps, embarrassingly. The boys are less interesting, although equally strange. Skylar Astin as Beca's love interest Jesse hasn't much to do but be funny and sweet to Beca and also is obsessed with movies (which I always appreciate in a man...). There seems to be some dangling plot-thread over a possible love triangle between him, Beca and the fantastically-abbed DJ on the college radio station so maybe he had more to do in the original script. He does sing wonderfully though and his version of It Feels Like The First Time by Foreigner during a riff-off between the various groups is excellent. There's additional comedy from inappropriate competition commentators Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins.

All-in-all, this is a fun movie, if you liked early season Glee and Bridesmaids. The music is really terrific, especially if you like mash-ups (which I do, a lot) and I appreciated the female bonding, which felt genuine and heartfelt and very much Bechdel-test-pass-y! Less vomiting would have been nice but you can't have everything.