Splatter: on FILM

Quotable quirk Glees it up retro style.

 

Perfunctory  performances get shots of caffeine as iTunes goes 8Track and back again and young college students sing Hip Hop hits in the accapella bowl to win the proverbial Nationals title and trophy.

 

Screenwriter, Kay Cannon, also writes for the show New Girl. She wrote for 30 Rock. She wrote Baby Mama. She’s in some pretty respected territory as a comedy writer. (Check out her imdb.com credits.)

 

 

I hope that she doesn’t take offense to my comparison, but I see Pitch Perfect as a Bring It On for a new generation.  I am one of a million who an claim Facebook friendship with Jessica Bendinger, a model turned screenwriter and novelist. When I met her a little over a year ago, she discussed writing the original Bring It On. She wisely said that staying up-to-date on “teen-speak” is impossible, so she made it up.  Yes, she coined the terms from the film that students began to use fluidly, thereby adding her cast to the lineage of linguistically shaping likes of Bill & Ted and Wayne & Garth. She directed a film called Stick It, bringing Jeff Bridges back into his new era of casting calls. She moved into tv writing for Sex & the City, and now she gets the odd call for the those random $10k meetings. She too stays busy.

 

Pitch Perfect, written by Cannon, works the same magic for a new era of highly cynical, overly tech-stimulated youth. It gives them a moment to laugh at their generation’s penchant for karaoke tv shows like American Idol and The Voice. It’s full of crude humor and slap-stick pranks goaded on by the odd girthy-great loud and lazy Australian-born  Rebel Wilson. What I liked about this film was that it makes fun of itself as it plays out. It isn’t trying to be more than quirky. It’s kitsch and that makes it kinda likable despite its expected level of locker room humor and language.