More Like This Please: Pitch Perfect Discussed

Niche is a word used with an increasing popularity. The culture of the future, if trends from today can be extrapolated outwards, will be filled millions of little pieces with their own separate audiences, their own appeals. This trend became most apparent during the rise of cable television. Late night used to be dominated by Johnny Carson. Now Leno, Conan and Letterman have to duke it out with Colbert and Stewart and an infinite number of other shows hidden deep in the recesses of your TV guide. The trend has also definitely been exacerbated by the depth and connectivity of the internet. And for now, it seems great. There are two complete channels entirely dedicated to food, for the love of god!

But, one (perhaps obvious) consequence of this niche-ification is the extinction of great cultural universals. The singular events that defined generations, be they political controversies, movies, music or television, are dwindling in number. Even news stories in the US, despite their seeming objectivity, are filtered through the three incredibly dissimilar perspectives of cable news networks.

Popular culture can be divided into groups: the popular, yet divisive, or the mass-produced and commercialized. Think of the great box office successes over the past few months. The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, despite being objectively great movies and incredible box office successes, are comic book movies that really only inherently appeal to fans of the genre.  The other “great” blockbusters (from Twilight to John Carter) are either watered down and bland or adapted from an already proven to be successful work.

This was my mindset when I walked into the theater to finally see Pitch Perfect. I knew the cast would be great (Adam DeVine, Rebel Wilson and Anna Kendrick star) and understood that 30 Rock writer Kay Cannon worked on the script. But my expectations had settled at seeing a full-length, reworked version of a Glee episode filled with one-note characters, clichéd romances and overblown drama and perfectly crafted to exploit the wallets of 14 to 25 year old girls and their parents, siblings or significant others.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all.

To start with, it was an incredibly fun movie. Sure, I’m a sucker for song and dance routines and those certainly helped fill the fun quotient of the film. But the performances are not wannabe high schoolers trying to sing the latest pop hits. The song choices were varied and entertainingly done, and everything was laced with great comedy. Nothing felt cheesy; nothing felt forced; nothing was too quirky or too “edgy” or too gross (although emetophobes should take note). More than that, the romantic plot was equally balanced. Again, there was not too much cheese and not too much cliché. Cannon’s experience as a writer for one of the best sitcoms currently on television certainly shines through.

Pitch Perfect manages to have a broad appeal and to be easily consumed without feeling bland or derivative, which is quite a difficult task to achieve. Overall, it is just a genuinely fun movie. Will it change the way movies are watched or produced? Does it take on the human condition or attempt to answer life’s great questions? Will it revolutionize the musical comedy film genre? No. Was it the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater since my last few trips? Do I wish there were more movies like this, more music like this, more television like this? Most definitely.