Pitch Per­fect 3

There’s a moment in Pitch Per­fect 3 when our plucky rag-tag band of hero­ines square off against their stock sec­ond sequel rivals, and decide to have a ​‘Riff Off’ (for the unini­ti­at­ed, that’s the a cap­pel­la ver­sion of a rap bat­tle). It’s a set piece that view­ers have come to expect from the fran­chise, but now in its third iter­a­tion, things have got­ten a bit stale.

Case in point: the Bar­don Bel­las burst into a ren­di­tion of R Kelly’s ​‘Igni­tion (Remix)’. The fact that in 2017 it’s still con­sid­ered accept­able for a big bud­get film to license a song by such a deeply prob­lem­at­ic indi­vid­ual – a big bud­get film that sells itself on the notion of female empow­er­ment, no less – speaks to how bad­ly wrong Hol­ly­wood con­tin­ues to get it.

The rea­son that the orig­i­nal Pitch Per­fect film did so well in 2012 (mak­ing $115.4 mil­lion on a $17 mil­lion bud­get) is fair­ly sim­ple: it gave audi­ences some­thing that they hadn’t real­ly seen before. A group of young women, doing some­thing they loved, refus­ing to bow to a soci­ety that tells women to sit down, play nice, and let men do the talk­ing. Its 2014 sequel – while hard­ly break­ing new ground – did even bet­ter, mak­ing a mas­sive $287.5 mil­lion on a $29 mil­lion bud­get. It was quirky and com­pas­sion­ate and gen­uine­ly a pret­ty fun time.

The films have been sold on the charis­ma of its stars (Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wil­son, Brit­tany Snow and Hailee Ste­in­feld, to name a few) and a mes­sage of girl pow­er not seen since the likes of Spice World. Pitch Per­fect 3 is the pur­port­ed final instal­ment in the saga, and sees the group head to Europe to per­form as an act on a Unit­ed States mil­i­tary tour, head­lined by super­star pro­duc­er and social media main­stay, DJ Khaled. The idea of DJ Khaled being sup­port­ed on tour by an a cap­pel­la troupe proves that Pitch Per­fect is set in some sort of strange alter­na­tive uni­verse – one where Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick) can record a per­fect­ly-engi­neered song in three min­utes, and uncom­fort­able patri­ot­ic over­tones go unchecked.

There’s sup­port in the form of Ruby Rose (who plays a moody singer in the unfor­tu­nate­ly-named band Ever­Moist) and John Lith­gow, who has unbri­dled fun don­ning an Aussie accent and pro­vid­ing minor per­il for the songstress­es. Yet this can’t save the film from being a strange hodge­podge of gen­res and tones, right down to a par­tic­u­lar­ly off-putting mid-sec­tion mon­tage that serves as a clas­sic move-the-sto­ry-along device.

This wouldn’t be such a glar­ing issue were there, in fact, much of a plot to start with, but in an attempt to side-step accu­sa­tions of retread­ing old ground, screen­writer Kay Can­non opts to stum­ble from musi­cal com­e­dy to crime caper and back. There’s a sub­plot for Rebel Wilson’s Fat Amy, but the rest of the action focus­es sole­ly on Beca’s tire­some whin­ing about her desire to hit the big time. Every oth­er char­ac­ter receives a trite stock end­ing by the time the cred­its roll, which feels insult­ing to cast and audience.

With a cosy Christ­mas release date, Pitch Per­fect 3 is clear­ly intend­ed as a film to pass the time dur­ing the hol­i­days (and have already seen Star Wars). A bit of light-heart­ed enter­tain­ment is no bad thing, and might even be con­sid­ered wel­come respite, but in this case, every­thing feels so lazy, so ill-con­ceived and so, so bor­ing. There’s none of the charm which made its pre­de­ces­sors light­ly enjoy­able com­ic out­ings. The jokes don’t land, the clich­es stack up, and it doesn’t do any jus­tice to its charm­ing cast.