044. Pitch Perfect

044. (30 Jan) Pitch Perfect (2012, Jason Moore) 53



This fun, but formulaic comedy offers few surprises, but is still rewarding thanks to strong comic turns by Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson. The musical numbers are a mixed bag. Most are disposable, some are quite charming. At some point, all it shameless crowd-pleasing proves hard to resist.

THE BLACK SHEEP INTERVIEW: ANNA KENDRICK

GET THIS GIRL A BUCKET!
An interview with Anna Kendrick.

If you’re like me, you first fell in love with Anna Kendrick when you caught her Oscar nominated turn in Jason Reitman’s UP IN THE AIR, opposite George Clooney. Over the last year, she has starred in four separate movies, including the cop thriller, END OF WATCH, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, and PARANORMAN, in which case she voices a vapid teenager. Kendrick also shows no signs of stopping either with four more films expected this year, including a small part in Robert Redford’s THE COMPANY YOU KEEP. And the audience shows no signs of getting sick of her either.

Kendrick’s biggest gamble in the last year would have to be PITCH PERFECT. It is her first starring role so not only did she have to prove she could carry a movie but she had to sing her way through it too. “Well, my first lead in a film anyone’s going to fucking see anyway,” Kendrick quips, when we sit down at the Toronto International Film Festival, just weeks before the film’s release. “I’m nervous about it. And I’m singing in it too, which makes it doubly nerve wracking.”

She needn’t have been so frantic about it. PITCH PERFECT became a sleeper hit at the box office, pulling in over $100 million globally. And as for the singing, she was over thinking that too. The soundtrack to PITCH PERFECT has been a permanent fixture in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart ever since the film was released on DVD in December. Still, I understand her apprehension at the time.

“Singing is something I’m comfortable with but it’s like anything. Doing it on screen, the stakes are a little bit higher.”

Kendrick’s role in END OF WATCH is small but pivotal. In the hands of another actress, she may have disappeared into the background, but Kendrick was sure there was something she could do with the part when she read the script. “I wish I could put into words what is great about the screenplay, what’s great about the characters, but I knew reading it, that if you had described it to me, I would have felt like it sounds just like a wife/girlfriend role. It doesn’t sound like something that would be that interesting. When I read it though, even though Janet isn’t in it a lot, it felt like she was incredibly important in rounding out this world, for creating a world in which it really feels like there is something at stake and there is something on the line.”

End of Watch

Kendrick plays Gyllenhaal’s girlfriend in END OF WATCH and one of their most endearing scenes comes when they dance at a wedding. “Wait, what are you talking about? That was not in the script.” This was Kendrick’s first reaction when writer/director, David Ayer, informed her that she and Gyllenhaal would not be just dancing together but dancing a piece of choreography in fact. “It said ‘They do a cheesy dance.’ I don’t know what we thought that was going to be but when we saw what it was, we were confused,” she explains. All the same, Kendrick thinks that, as seemingly simple as this scene is, it was one she really needed her director for. “That was one of those moments. In a movie like this, there are so many big emotional moments where you really feel like you have to trust your director, but doing the wedding dance was the moment that we really needed to trust our director.”

And how did Mr. Gyllenhaal fare at this dance? “Uh, Jake was not great at learning it. Sometimes, he was watching me just to keep up.” (END OF WATCH is now available on DVD and you can read more about it in my interview with Gyllenhaal himself.)

Kendrick’s time on THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, in theatres in April, was even shorter than her time on END OF WATCH, just three days. “I would have delivered his coffee if he had asked me to so I was just really happy to have that opportunity,” Kendrick reveals of her desire to work with Redford. “It was really interesting working with a director who is such a fantastic actor and such an experienced actor. He is a very intimate director. It was a very brief experience for me but a truly fascinating process.”

Pitch Perfect

Kendrick is always learning and growing and, at just 27 years old, this Maine native still has plenty of time to do both of these things. Now, she just has to calm her nerves and enjoy the ride. “It’s going to be awesome but I’m still nervous,” she jokes when asked about the prospect of her future. “I kind of feel like I’m on the verge of throwing up all the time.”

Did I mention that Kendrick is absolutely adorable in person?

PITCH PERFECT

PITCH PERFECT
Written by Kay Cannon
Directed by Jason Moore
Starring Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow, Skyler Astin and Anna Camp

Aubrey: Aca-scuse me?

Despite its best efforts to differentiate itself from “Glee”, PITCH PERFECT is not that much more than a blatant attempt to capitalize on the success that show has enjoyed bringing show choir to the masses. Without ever saying the word, “glee” once, one of the inevitably geeky-ish a cappella singers decrees at one point early on that collegiate competitive a cappella singing is not like high school, where you sing through whatever emotional or identity crisis you’re going through. No, no; in fact, this is some serious stuff here. All the same, as these boys and girls sing their way through finding acceptance and make their way toward regionals and subsequently, finals, I coudln’t help but wonder when Rachel Berry was going to storm into the choir room and whip them all into shape. Unfortunately, she never arrived.

This is not to say that PITCH PERFECT doesn’t deliver any of the gooey good times that come with any piece featuring young people who find happiness in song and dance. It’s just that its pitch never comes anywhere near perfect. Anna Kendrick leads the charge, for the first time in her career actually, and, after seeing her play such sophisticated, adult characters in the past (50/50, UP IN THE AIR), watching her regress into a character that is actually more her age feels somewhat forced and beneath her. This is especially true here because the film is so formulaic and predictable. It calls itself out on that one too, as if that is supposed to excuse it for not trying to be original. Still, Kendrick, along with standouts, Brittany Snow (BRIDESMAIDS) and Anna Camp (THE HELP), bring everything they have to their characters and provide PITCH PERFECT with scattered moments of hilarity and tenderness.

Cute is the only word I can truly use to describe PITCH PERFECT. These days, calling something cute though is something of a double-edged sword. Yes, it made me giggle and I may start adding “aca” as a prefix ahead of all the aca-awesome things I say on a regular basis. That said though, cute also implies that the film tries really hard but never quite gets it right, like giving a little pat on the head to a toddler who did his best at a dance recital when you know they will never really make it anywhere in the field. These young folks sing their little hearts out, occasionally hitting notes you don’t see coming, but never belt it out of the park. It all just fell a little flat for me.

END OF WATCH

END OF WATCH

Written and Directed by David Ayer

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena and Anna Kendrick

Officer Zavala: Comfortable footwear. Police work is all about comfortable footwear.

David Ayer knows a thing or two about writing cop movies. Unfortunately, directing them is bit more of a struggle for him. With his latest police drama, END OF WATCH, he decides that, in order for him to keep the genre fresh, he must leave the crookedness that he wrote so well in TRAINING DAY behind him, and tell the story of two earnest Los Angeles police officers. The approach isn’t necessarily novel but it is at the very least valiant. It’s how he decides this story should be told that we should call the cops on him for.

Police officers, Taylor and Zavala (Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena), are back at work after a month’s leave, while one of their on the job shootings was being investigated. They were naturally exonerated and being the eager, young lads that they are, they are almost giddy to be getting back to work. Taylor is capturing this momentous occasion, and all subsequent police dealings, with his digital camera, which he explains as necessary to fulfill his law school elective film component. Not only are we asked to buy into this flimsy justification for the camera’s presence, but then we are subjected to watch the actual footage he gets. Ayer then cuts back and forth between Taylor’s camera and his own omniscient point of view whenever he needs to, occasionally cutting in other video camera footage that has mysteriously been obtained by gang members who thought it was a smart idea to capture their drive-by’s for prosperity. It is jarring, to say the least, and at times, so nonsensical in terms of perspective, that it becomes very difficult to stay in the film.

END OF WATCH does have two things going for it and, for cop flick fans, they may even be enough to make the experience enjoyable. These two things are Gylenhaal and Pena. Together, these partners feel like genuine partners, the kind who will always have each others’ back, no matter what. They are forceful and violent when they need to be and relaxed and supportive when that’s what called for. Their believability elevates the overall believability of the film, which, between the perspective issues and the horribly amateurish acting from the supposedly frightening Mexican gang members, this film desperately needs. At least Ayer succeeds in bringing one great cinematic truth to light; Police officers in South Central Los Angeles have it rougher than any other ... Wait. You knew that already? Never mind then. End of review.

50/50

Written by Will Reiser

Directed by Jonathan Levine

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, 

Bryce Dallas Howard and Anjelica Huston

Adam: I can’t remember being so calm in a long time.

Katie: Would you describe it as numbness?

Adam: No, I would describe it as fine.

Up and coming director, Jonathan Levine’s latest film, 50/50, is being billed as a cancer comedy, only I cried about five times so I’m not sure the descriptor really fits. 50/50 is writer, Will Reiser’s first hand account of what it was like to get cancer in his 20’s. Clearly, as he is still here to tell the tale, he lives through the ordeal, but knowing this does not take away from the personal journey he shares with us. And fortunately for all involved, that journey is being taken on screen by the always impressive, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who easily makes 50/50 a sure bet.

Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, whom we first meet jogging down the streets of Seattle at dawn. Instantly, while we watch him wait at a red light to cross an intersection despite any trace of traffic approaching, we know that Adam is cautious and self-aware. Even when he is told that he has cancer, he protests on the basis that he doesn’t smoke or drink and that he recycles. Adam follows the rules and yet is being inexplicably punished. Adam is not particularly original, as far as characters go, but his emotional path leaves the character so exposed and vulnerable that we are deeply endeared to him. Commendably, Reiser does not make us pity him but instead it feels like a rare and  honest account of his experience. For Gordon-Levitt to be able to open himself up to this kind of candidness only further proves that he is one of the most relatable young actors working today.

I felt I could know Adam, that he could be one of my friends. That one of my friends could go through this is foreign to me and fortunately, not something I’ve ever had to go through. As much as 50/50 is about Adam’s plight, the other half of it is about how the people around him learn to support him. From his best friend (Seth Rogen, playing a role based on himself, as he is also Reiser’s best friend in real life) to his mother (Anjelica Huston, making the most of her little screen time) to love interests both potential (Anna Kendrick) and exiting (Bryce Dallas Howard), everyone in his life stumbles through supporting him as if they were blindly walking into walls. Everyone is trying though, reminding us just how important intention really is, and 50/50 surely has the best of them.

TIFF Review: 50/50

Written by Will Reiser

Directed by Jonathan Levine

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, 

Bryce Dallas Howard and Anjelica Huston

Adam: I can’t remember being so calm in a long time.

Katie: Would you describe it as numbness?

Adam: No, I would describe it as fine.

Up and coming director, Jonathan Levine’s latest film, 50/50, is being billed as a cancer comedy, only I cried about five times so I’m not sure the descriptor really fits. 50/50 is writer, Will Reiser’s first hand account of what it was like to get cancer in his 20’s. Clearly, as he is still here to tell the tale, he lives through the ordeal, but knowing this does not take away from the personal journey he shares with us. And fortunately for all involved, that journey is being taken on screen by the always impressive, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who easily makes 50/50 a sure bet.

Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, whom we first meet jogging down the streets of Seattle at dawn. Instantly, while we watch him wait at a red light to cross an intersection despite any trace of traffic approaching, we know that Adam is cautious and self-aware. Even when he is told that he has cancer, he protests on the basis that he doesn’t smoke or drink and that he recycles. Adam follows the rules and yet is being inexplicably punished. Adam is not particularly original, as far as characters go, but his emotional path leaves the character so exposed and vulnerable that we are deeply endeared to him. Commendably, Reiser does not make us pity him but instead it feels like a rare and  honest account of his experience. For Gordon-Levitt to be able to open himself up to this kind of candidness only further proves that he is one of the most relatable young actors working today.

I felt I could know Adam, that he could be one of my friends. That one of my friends could go through this is foreign to me and fortunately, not something I’ve ever had to go through. As much as 50/50 is about Adam’s plight, the other half of it is about how the people around him learn to support him. From his best friend (Seth Rogen, playing a role based on himself, as he is also Reiser’s best friend in real life) to his mother (Anjelica Huston, making the most of her little screen time) to love interests both potential (Anna Kendrick) and exiting (Bryce Dallas Howard), everyone in his life stumbles through supporting him as if they were blindly walking into walls. Everyone is trying though, reminding us just how important intention really is, and 50/50 surely has the best of them.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "50/50"

Try not to love him.  I dare you.  Just try.  Women love him and guys think he's awesome, and I'll always remember him as the best part of 3rd Rock From the Sun.  Is there a person alive who can look as dapper wearing skinny ties and vests.



I'm foreseeing the possibility of this snagging an Original Screenplay nomination for scribe Will Reiser, given the indie dramedy feel from the trailer.  This type of film typically registers well with the writing branch, and if not the Oscars most certainly the WGA.

I loved Levitt's work in (500) Days of Summer, so he's proven he's capable of leading man work.  His character is going down a different journey in 50/50, but this could be a big showcase for this constantly almost-next-big thing actor.  The supporting cast looks fun, with greats thesps like Anjelica Huston, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Philip Baker Hall offering reefer snacks.  The only slight concern I have with the trailer is Seth Rogen and the way-too-obvious-and-too-numerous alone shots of Levitt.  But, this could be a fun movie.

Oh.  And how about that Anna Kendrick?  She looks great in it.


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