Pitch Perfect: The Guilty Pleasure We Crave

When I heard the audience applaud and cheer the trailer for Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Pt. 2, I quickly second-guessed my decision to review the a cappella chick-flick Pitch Perfect. Had my love for a cappella music finally gone too far? Had I once again blurred the line between guilty pleasure and guilt? Maybe that testosterone intervention wasn’t such a ridiculous idea…

But then it happened. First, Adam DeVine (along with the all-male “treble makers”) owns the opening set with all the farcical swagger we’ve come to love (or at least expect) from the Workaholics star and long-lost twin of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—who knew the guy could sing, too? Then come the females (the Barden Bellas) an ensemble of such collective beauty that the cast of America’s Next Top Model suddenly feels more like Extreme Makeover: Homely Anorexic Edition.

I was already starting to feel more at ease, but it was the banter between the two judges—John (John Michael Higgins) and Gail (Elizabeth Banks)—that truly won me over. When Gail asks why all-female a cappella groups never go all the way at national competitions, John explains that the female voice naturally cannot reach the low bass notes, thus preventing all-female groups from achieving the same full range of sound that other male or co-ed groups can achieve: “Women are about as good at a cappella as they are at being doctors,” John concludes with a hardy chuckle.

Wait—did John Michael Higgins just follow up an extremely accurate technical analysis of a cappella music with a misogynistic slight? Did they just cut to a close up of the cleavage on that hot mezzo-soprano?

And just like that, I felt completely at ease being the only single straight male in that theater. I was wrong. This is nothing like that time I convinced my friend that it would be funny to see the premiere of Twilight “ironically.” This is my kosher bacon, my guilty pleasure, too pleasurable to induce guilt. Good music, solid story structure, beautiful women, funny jokes, Anna Kendricks and Brittany Snow harmonizing naked in the shower—there’s nothing emasculating about this at all! Hell, I’d go so far as to say that Pitch Perfect is, in the words of Jewel, “meant for me.”

All gender identity issues aside, part of the brilliance of Pitch Perfect is the film’s astute awareness of its own identity and function as a film centered on pure entertainment. There is almost an air of parody with which the film juxtaposes certain preconceptions about a cappella (or labels as a whole):

 “Nerd alert,” scoffs Bumper (DeVine), the head of the Bella’s all-male a cappella rivals (the treble makers), in response to the praises of the Star Wars geek and a cappella hopeful Benji (Ben Platt). But he follows that up with: “Okay now let’s match pitch. Ahhh…”

And yet despite its willingness to laugh at its own campiness, Pitch Perfect knows exactly what its audience wants to see. I can’t spoil the plot for you any more than I can spoil the plot of When Harry Met Sally. I mean, what kind of movie would it be if Harry chased down Sally on New Years and asked if they could just be friends? Similarly, Pitch Perfect follows the three-act structure down to every last detail, and they make clear their intentions from very early on. Love interest Jesse (Skylar Astin) tells Becca (Kendricks) right from the beginning: “I’m an a cappella guy. You’re an a cappella girl. We’re gonna have a ca-children.”

Spoiler alert: Jesse doesn’t literally get her pregnant.

Admittedly, you probably have to enjoy (or at the very least tolerate) a cappella music to really enjoy Pitch Perfect to its fullest. But at the end of the day, Pitch Perfect accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: add a fresh musical component along with some genuinely well-crafted humor to a proven genre convention, giving audiences the guilty pleasure flick we so shamelessly crave and deserve.