Pitch Perfect

[osprey_archer]

At last I have seen Pitch Perfect! I say "at last" because, (1), people have been recommending this movie to me more or less since it came out, and (2) the DVD has been waiting patiently in its Netflix envelope for going on three months now before my brother and I finally got it together to watch it.

(I must confess that one of the reasons it's taken me so long is that I heard about the vomiting scene beforehand. It's not as bad as I imagined, but still, it seems unnecessary. No one ever watched a movie and said, "This is good, but it needs more gratuitous vomiting.")

And I did like it, although I was a little puzzled that it became such a phenomenon, because it's fun and the songs are catchy but it's basically two-dimensional. There are so many characters that the movie didn't even have time to establish all of their names, let alone give them backstories or motivations. The main conflict in the movie is between Aubrey Posen, the a cappella group president who wants to stick with the traditional set list (right down to surprisingly eighties performance clothes, complete with little neck scarves), and...well, really the entire rest of the group, but most of all Beca, all of whom know that the group needs to diversify if it's going to compete.

Why is Aubrey so obsessed with clinging to the Bellas' old a cappella traditions? And why are all the club members willing to put up with their out-of-touch martinet of a leader? We never do find out. Beca, the main character, is fleshed out a little, but she's the only one. There's simply no time for everyone else.

The movie would have been stronger if it had been more focused. In particular, it could have freed up a lot of much-needed space by cutting almost all of the parts focusing on the boys' a cappella group. They're the Bellas main rivals and their leader is a grade A douche: that's all we really need to know about them. Even Beca's romance (cute though it was) could have been cut. Beca's confession near the end that the Bellas were her first group of female friends would have had a lot more weight if we'd seen more of her friendship with them.

My theory is that there are so few movies about female friendship in the first place that people fall on the few that do exist like water in the desert, even if they leave much to be desired. Like, say, actual development for those friendships.

Comments

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

It might be true that audiences who see things for free are the most picky, because I saw this in a movie theater and hated it. Like, "hated" isn't a strong enough word.

The niceguying of Beca made me want to punch that actor so badly, I CAN'T EVEN. Not to mention the homophobic "lesbian" stereotype (like, hello, the harassment got to the point where the woman subjected to it was actively BLOWING A RAPE WHISTLE, and we're supposed to find that funny?? FUCK that.)

Not to mention that the penultimate point of the movie, when the girls are performing their triumphant mash-up, they break the explicitly laid rules of performing songs written &/or performed by female artists because... WHY? Because there aren't enough good songs written by female artists? NO. Because we had to make it a ~romantic~ moment between the dumbshit stalker asshole and the object of his affections. You're absolutely right, if this movie were actually about female friendship, their last mashup performance should have been about highlighting their relationships to one another, instead of randomly assigning a song for the gross "romance" to Beca because ~movies~ (especially since that song was really not suited to Anna Kendrick's voice, IMO).

God that movie pissed me off so much. What a waste.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm distracted... what does the text in your icon say? I can't parse the font.

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

"I beez in the trap" after the Nicki Minaj song (https://youtu.be/EmZvOhHF85I). I made it after Samuel L Jackson did this (https://youtu.be/_E2K31h66Tk).

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I actually thought the romance was one of the few things the movie did well (although also, unfortunately, one of the subplots that meant the movie never really came together as a whole). He didn't strike me as a Nice Guy; his behavior makes it pretty clear from the beginning that he's angling for a romantic relationship (and, crucially, Beca flirts back at him; he's not being all creepy at a girl who doesn't like him). When it seems like that's never going to happen, he backs off.

And then Beca makes that grand romantic gesture which of course solves everything (this being Movieland) even though it doesn't actually address any of their issues.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

The only thing I remember about that movie was the shower scene that was astoundingly creepy and invasive, but apparently if it's two women that's the basis for a fluffy f/f ship that never acknowledges the harassment. Hooray for fandom.

Anyway, I didn't think it was very good, but yeah, people are starved for movies that even pay lip service to the existence of female friendship.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

The shower scene was terrifying. Beca is just standing there, kind of pressed against the wall, clearly too frozen with shock to start beating Chloe with a shower brush even though Chloe clearly deserved it. You couldn't even do this through the shower curtain, Chloe???

Of course people ship it. The movie is surprisingly low on ship fodder, so naturally people latched onto that.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

It's not that people ship it, it's that no one else seemed to find that scene to be creepy harassment. Like, if Chloe were a dude, I think people would have noticed? And maybe shipped it anyway, but at least acknowledged that cornering someone in the shower is pretty aggressive and intimidating behavior. (I mean, people noticed that shower scene in Skyfall and mentioned it in discussions as kind of sketchy, and that was nowhere near as aggressively staged.)

Although I suppose my experience IRL has been that people don't take women sexually harassing women seriously in general, so. IDK. I guess it hits some sensitive spots for me.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

My impression, both in and out of fandom, is that people think of sexual harassment as something men do to women and maaaaaybe to other men, yeah. A lot of people seem to have trouble wrapping their minds around any other configuration.

I've also noticed that people will often not notice deeply sketchy things in movies if the movie itself doesn't acknowledge that it's sketchy. Lots of people take their emotional cues from the movie - this is a comedy, so creepy thing X must be funny - and don't really look deeper than that.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Old reply is old, but yes, I think you're right on both counts. (Although I think fandom is still much more attuned to that kind of sketchiness even in comedy if it's man-->woman.)