Direction: Trish Sie; Starring: Anna Kendriks, Rebel Wilson, Brittney Snow, John Lithgow, Elizabeth Banks; Screenplay: Kay Cannon, Mike White.; Editing: Craig Alpert, Colin Patton ; Producer: Elizabeth Banks, Paul Brooks, Max Handelman; Music: Christopher Lennertzm; Location: Europe; Genre: Musical Comedy; Running
Time: 94 minutes;
Technical assessment: 2.5
Moral
assessment: 2.5
CINEMA
rating: V14
MTRCB
rating: PG13
Becca (Kendrick), Fat Amy (Wilson) and Chloe (Snow)
are new professionals fixated on their glorious The Bella days in college. Stuck in the empty drudgery of their dead-end-jobs,
they accept an invitation from a current Bella member thinking
they will be given a chance to perform again. Adding insult to their self pitying is that the invitation is for them to listen and watch the current young Bellas perform. So to redeem themselves, the girls accept to participate in the USO
tour of Europe in the hope of proving that they are still a force to contend
with. As usual, they are met with hostility by the more sophisticated and
talented rivals while being tangled in their personal feuds and
uncompromising personalities. On the side still is a subplot of Fat Amy and her
gangster father (Lithgow) who is after her 180 million-dollar inheritance and thinks that kidnapping the Bellas is the cleverest way to get his hands on the loot.
Pitch Perfect 3 feels
like the tail end of an over stretched party—predictable, tired. and almost silly. Elizabeth Banks stepping down from her role as director of Pitch Perfect 2 and concentrating on playing the sarcastic commentator Gail must have been the wisest decision made by a former cast and crew. While Trish Sie tries hard to keep it sparkling and spunky, she just could not keep it from crashing on the ground because of
lazy performances of some cast (Lithgow and Snow), formulaic flow, and a weak storyline. Only Becca’s character and Kendrick’s performance
really grows and deserves a trilogy. The rest just reprise their roles and performances from Pitch Perfect 1. Even the mashup of songs, which audiences fell in love with in the
first movie was not memorable enough to have retention.
The biggest saving grace of the Pitch
Perfect 3 is its efforts to show how real friendship cuts through the worst
of situations to bring out the best in people. Becca, Fat Amy and the rest of
the Bellas finally discover that it is not old glory which matters most but
old loyalties and genuine care for one another. The jokes are for adults and at
times not really funny. The movie contains an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, vulgar
humor, and a couple of crude language incidents. CINEMA rates that film as suitable only for older
bored young adults. (PMF)
