I finally watched Pitch Perfect, just before Pitch Perfect 2 came out.
(image from Amazon.com)
In fact, I watched it twice. Which surprised me, because the first time through I was thinking it was pretty lame/silly. There’s a part where one of the characters says she doesn’t like movies because they’re so predictable, and I was thinking, “TELL ME ABOUT IT.”
And it IS predictable. And a lot of the characters are caricatures, with simplified motivations and feelings and personalities (here’s The Weird One, here’s The Sexy One, etc.), and there are some really dumb parts (“Why won’t you let anyone GET CLOSE TO YOU??,” “Why won’t you let me FOLLOW MY DREAMS, Uncool Parent??,” etc.). And there is some exaggerated gross-out stuff that is not my style at all.
But the real point of the plot seems to be to hold together a bunch of really good/fun a cappella numbers, and it does that job very well. And everyone in the movie is really, really pleasant to look at, which helps too, and there are some good jokes and good lines and good scenes, and I LOVED the songs/performances, and the fact of the matter is that not only did I watch it twice, I’ll almost certainly watch it more times than that. And even though I found it completely predictable, at one point William, age 14, said, “Ug, I know EXACTLY what’s going to happen here,” and I said, “Oh, I know”—and then later he said, “That wasn’t at ALL what I thought was going to happen,” so it may be perfect for young-adult viewers (if you don’t mind them seeing a little crude/racy stuff, which I don’t).
One good thing about the movie is that you can pick up anywhere or leave off anywhere and still enjoy it; I made fudge and had to keep leaving the room and/or looking away from the screen, and that didn’t matter at all. A downside is that the soundtrack is reportedly disappointing: just fragments of songs, and leaves out a lot of the best ones. I had it in my cart to buy on the spot, and then read the reviews and backed off.
I read Find Me, which I thought would be exactly my thing, but it wasn’t:
(image from Amazon.com)
The inside flap describes a girl who doesn’t catch a devastating and hugely contagious illness; she and other non-sick people are taken to a hospital so their immunity can be studied and maybe used for a cure. The subplot is that she’s looking for her mother, who left her on the steps of a hospital when she was an infant.
The book has several really engaging mysteries in it—and then it just chooses not to solve them. I consider that a big cheat: a good hook is only legitimate if a good reveal is coming. Oh, is that not how it works in real life, where we often don’t get to know why something happened or how something turned out? THAT IS WHY I AM READING FICTION. It is so wrong to have a reader follow a narrator right up to the BRINK of the resolution of a plotline, and then have the author be all, “Yeah, but it sounds prettier/deeper if I end philosophically/poetically rather than descriptively/satisfyingly. And by the way, I’m never going to tell you what happened with plotlines A, B, and C, either.”
I notice that the author previously wrote short-story collections, and this is her first novel. I remember reading another author, one who wrote both short stories and novels (I think it was Jeffery Deaver), say he enjoyed writing short stories because there isn’t the same contract with the reader: with a novel, you have to have satisfying resolution, you can’t kill your protagonist, etc., but with a short story you have more freedom to end things without resolution or with disaster or a sudden surprise twist. It seems to me that Laura van den Berg wrote a novel using the short-story reader contract.
Thank you for your book review! Now I never have to read that.
I love Pitch Perfect. I hate the gross parts but somehow they’re tolerable because the rest is so fun. I saw PP2 and I might go see it again before it leaves theaters. The plot is less good than the first one, but the music is even better.
I’m so glad you mentioned that “Find Me” doesn’t actually resolve anything. I had heard a lot of buzz about the book so I put it on my list of books to keep an eye out for. Since I just finished Birdbox which I found disappointing for the lack of resolution at the end (and what little bit is resolved is not terribly interesting), I think I can safely cross “Find Me” off my list and limit my disappointing reading somewhat.
“THAT IS WHY I AM READING FICTION”— YES!!!
I don’t think I can ever get enough Pitch Perfect. I set up a Pitch Perfect based Pandora station and I listen to it almost every day.
The soundtrack is pretty much exactly what’s in the movie. So for instance, for the Riff-Off they didn’t then record full versions of those songs, they just used the bits used for the battle. But in my opinion that’s fine because I like being able to hear the way the songs play off each other. I was a bit disappointed in the soundtrack for the second movie, because they left a lot of the silly, jokey stuff in that only makes sense when you’re *watching* the movie but is less enjoyable when just *listening* to the soundtrack. But I didn’t have that problem with the first soundtrack at all.
Yes, for the riff-off it makes sense to have song pieces instead of the whole song: I’d WANT to hear it as they did it in the movie, since interlocking pieces were the point. But reviewers were saying that with other songs, the only part on the soundtrack was the part in the movie. Like, if they supposedly performed the whole song, but we only saw a minute of the performance in the movie, only one minute of the song was on the soundtrack. In those cases, I’d want to hear the whole song, not just part of it.
My husband and I are musicians and love the Pitch Perfect movies as much for the snarky, quotable lines as for the songs.
Also I’m wondering if you can recommend more blogs. I have loved reading Temerity Jane and Empty Nest Feathers, which I found here when you’ve linked to them. Who else do you follow? I so enjoy good storytellers.
And my niece is 7 and does Fat Amy’s mermaid dance and it is perfect.
We won’t let the seven year old watch for the raunchy bits, but we all really enjoy the soundtrack in the car. I don’t really know what you mean about hits of songs, we certainly haven’t noticed it, but it could be a thing.
I think your review of PP is perfect, I agree and really dislike gross parts of regular movies. Like if I was watching Faces of Death or something I’d expect gross things but I hate when there is surprise grossness, see also Bridesmaids. We just saw PP2 last week and it was kind of dumb but my LORD there were parts that made me laugh out loud.
I was primed to love Pitch Perfect, then was really disappointed in it. I liked the music, but I didn’t think the acting was very good and some stuff made no sense.
*SPOILER ALERT*
The girl no one can even hear made it through the supposedly-highly-competitive auditions?
The girl in the shower with her boyfriend comes barging into the stall of the protagonist to do an impromptu duet?
Seriously?
I don’t like it when major storylines don’t resolve, either. I can deal with it in certain ways if the author is extremely good, but mostly I really prefer resolution. Like for instance in the book you mention (which I have not read), I could deal with a very good author having the protagonist say, “I understand now that I won’t ever find my mother (for X reason) and I’ll have to live with that mystery and it will be part of who I am forever, like a scar from surgery.” Sometimes longing and mystery can be really well done if you acknowledge it and make it part of the book. BUT! You can’t pull that off too often or it’s just annoying, and a lot of authors can’t do it at all.
I finished Find Me on Friday night, and I didn’t care for it either–too bad I didn’t hold off on it until I read your review! I found it kind of irritating, actually, and it left too many loose threads.
I am IN LOVE WITH Pitch Perfect. And I agree, the tropes are so tired, and so done – and in the second movie they get even more embarrassingly so, especially with the fat girl jokes – AND YET. I could watch either movie one million times. I have come close with the original at this point.
I am actually thinking about going on CraigsList to see if there’s someone who wants to trade voice lessons for piano lessons, and I think it’s partly because those movies make me want to sing well SO BADLY.
This post is SO TIMELY! Literally just this morning I was trying to remember the name of Find Me and also trying to remember what the heck happened at the end. I could remember neither thing, only the general plot outline and it was driving me crazy. I am so satisfied to hear that I probably don’t remember what happened because nothing got resolved. I cannot stand books with those kinds of endings so no wonder my brain just deleted it.
I love that movie! Also: Pitch Perfect Pandora station! It’s what you wanted the soundtrack to be but even better. Recommend!
On the strength of your recommendation, I watched Pitch Perfect over the weekend and LOVED it!! It was the same kind of formulaic-but-pure-fun that makes me love Bring It On and Center Stage. I will definitely be watching it again; it’s a great mood-lifter and the songs are so catchy!
Oh good, I’m glad you liked it!