Pitch Perfect 3 shouldn’t exist. There, I said it.
Before you get yourself all worked up into a lather, rest easy, because this is just my opinion and I’m not about to drop some recently uncovered information about how the Pitch Perfect films shouldn’t exist. There’s no conspiracy here — just someone who’s extremely not into the idea of watching Rebel Wilson trot out the same tired Fat Amy jokes while Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow remain the pluckiest heroines of all time. Pitch Perfect did this in an endearing way, but the second installment did it to my great chagrin and I expect the third installment will hardly change that game plan to a fresh round of applause.
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Don’t get me wrong: Pitch Perfect, the first film in what would become a nauseating franchise, was great. The star power of Kendrick and Wilson was enough to get my butt in the seat, and furthermore, the story of a motley crew of women coming together to pursue, of all things, a capella glory in a collegiate setting was offbeat, approachable and genuinely fun. Plus, the music was a helluva lot of fun and, during a time when a capella was having a moment in pop culture, it was easy to get sucked in. I mean, who didn’t want to learn to play “Cups (When I’m Gone)” on actual cups once the Pitch Perfect credits rolled?
But just because Pitch Perfect was a fun movie, that doesn’t mean it warranted a second and third movie. Where was the clamor? Where was the excitement for more of the Barden Bellas? No, I’d wager there wasn’t and frankly, Pitch Perfect 2 proved to us that there was little to mine in the way of continued originality or amusement from the seeds of female empowerment in the world of a capella (?!) that was worth the price of admission.
Image: Giphy
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But here we are, faced with the prospect of yet another Pitch Perfect movie hitting theaters, getting turned into memes, clogging our cultural conversations and basically dragging down the mood at an otherwise fun time of year. Why in all that is aca-good and aca-holy would we want to watch a film about the Bellas who are, for the most part, recent college graduates who lament their inability to enter the workforce and are “forced” (I use this term lightly, for reasons that will become clear in a second) to go on a trip halfway across the world to participate in a singing competition as part of a USO tour (I couldn’t make this up if I tried, y’all), all so they can relive their undergrad glory and maybe find a place in this world?
Good lord, Pitch Perfect 3. Please just stop what you’re doing and give up. The plot of this film sounds downright insufferable, and it looks like it’s just an elaborate setup for Wilson to become the butt of every joke involving serious physical comedy. Add to this the fact that there are literally a million other things I want to do than watch the Bellas have a riff-off in an airplane hangar or sing Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” and I come back to my original statement: this is just a nonsensical film franchise that never should have existed. Worse still, I don’t doubt that it will once again peddle its themes of eternal friendship and sisterhood, which somehow ring hollow during moments like the one in the trailer, where Chloe tells the Bellas that she lives on in their hearts, meaning that she is literally inside them, which cues good-natured eye rolls from the rest of the group. Gag me with a spoon, Pitch Perfect 3.
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So, no, I won’t be going to see Pitch Perfect 3, and you shouldn’t, either. This is undoubtedly going to be a rehash of tired ideas and stupid jokes, all wrapped up with a neat a capella bow that will make me want to plug my ears. Thanks but no thanks, guys. I’ve had enough.
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