The Problems with Pitch Perfect
Oct. 9th, 2012 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficPitch Perfect has been getting rave reviews for being like but not quite as good as Bring It On. But what if you, like 70% of Americans whose fathers did not drink, cannot listen to the acapella cover songs? How will you participate in the national conversation when you can't quote Stick It v2.0? It's not like most of the good one-liners are in the trailer (it is exactly like that). Well, don't you fret, because over the next five minutes, we'll go over Pitch Perfect in an academic, easy-to-read style—a Cliff's Notes if you will, but don't because their copyright lawyers are Rottweilers. Let's begin, shall we?
Inside an auditorium that's supposed to look like it cost twenty dollars to rent, ELIZABETH BANKS is playing the FRED WILLARD part from a CHRISTOPHER GUEST movie.
ELIZABETH BANKS: Now that I'm done playing a thankless supporting role in the Spider-Man trilogy, I'm glad I can star in smaller, independent movies… in thankless supporting roles. Anyway, a cappella music!
BEATER and the TREBLEMAKERS, the film's boo-hiss villains, perform. Then, since the movie has no idea how someone can be a villain in a movie about a cappella singing, Beater just tells our heroes they suck. Which they do.
CHLOE: Well, according to the credits this is based on a non-fiction book about a cappella groups, so all we have to do is subtly exaggerate the real-life situations we chose to make a movie out of and—
AUDREY, the film's KIRSTEN DUNST, immediately vomits over the entire auditorium because the director forgot he wasn't making SONG MOVIE from two out of the six writers of SCARY MOVIE.
***
Six months later, BECA is going to college. She's an aggressive, in-your-face DJ played by Anne Kendrick.
Yes, that Anne Kendrick.
This is the face Anne Kendrick would make while she was planning to murder and eat your entire family. Awww, let's hug it out, family-eater!
BECA: Man, fuck fucking going to college for fucking free. I want to become a DJ! …only in a movie so white that it's about a cappella could I not be the snooty elitist scum.
AUDREY: Hello Beca, how'd you like to join our specific a cappella group? There are four of us on campus, the vaguely evil ones, the two no one cares about, and us, the League of Stereotypes You Could Only Get Away With In A Teen Movie.
WEIRD ONE: I'm the weird one.
FAT ONE: I'm the fat one.
SLUTTY ONE: I'm the slutty one.
BL&TM: I'm the Butch Lesbian and the Token Minority. (beat) We were running out of slots.
BECA: Well, I'm basically the Eliza Dushku character from Bring It On, talented but resenting the specific use of my talents the film is about, yet forced into it by a contrived plot device.
AUDREY: Oh, an Eliza Dushku character? You'll fit right into the League! Now, would you like to be uncomfortably sexualized or just, ya know… 'sex-positive'?
***
Beca takes a shower so the boyfriends in the audience can briefly stop wondering how watching Glee could come to this.
BECA: Top 40 hit, la la la, la la laaaaaa.
CHLOE: Oh my god, you're super-talented and pretty and you should totally join my a cappella group so we can spend all our time together!
BECA: Well, this kooky meet-cute is starting to seem overtly homoerotic. Can anything cut the unresolved sexual tension here?
NAKED GUY: Hi, I was taking a shower with Chloe and I'd just like to say that you really are a good singer, Beca.
CHLOE: Thanks for reiterating my heterosexuality.
BECA: And mine!
NAKED GUY: Thanks. I'll now leave the movie, never to returnnnnnnn.
***
BECA: Ha, join an a cappella group? Over my dead contrived plot point.
PROFESSOR DAD: Hi Beca, I know you're still not over our vague estrangement issues, but I just want you to give some random college activity one year and if you still hate it at the end, I'll help you move to LA and become a DJ.
BECA: Screw your ultimatums, dad! I'm a strong, independent woman! I don't need your help to follow my dreams! (beat) Wait, I guess I do. A cappella it is!
***
CHLOE: Bad news, Audrey! It looks like most of the auditions we're accepting for the League are awful. It'll take some real work to whip them into shape.
AUDREY: Relax, we'll just do a montage so they all become awesome, then the only issue will be what song we awesomely perform.
CHLOE: Isn't that like a Chuck Norris movie where Chuck doesn't have to train for an underground fighting tournament, he just has to decide what his entrance music is?
AUDREY: No. Nothing is like Chuck Norris except Chuck Norris.
And ninja pirate robot THIS JOKE IS SO OLD I'M BORED ALREADY LET'S JUST STOP WITH IT OKAY?
Beca arrives late and performs her own song, because she's the protagonist.
CHLOE: Holy crap, that blew my mind! Although literally all you had to do was show up, as we just accepted everyone.
BECA: I'm not so good at this rebel business.
CHLOE: Well, Anne Kendrick.
JESSE: Oh hey, didn't Eliza Dushku have a love interest in Bring It On?
BECA: Oh hey, it's that guy whose introduction curiously mirrored my own. You really going to have your own arc about joining your own a cappella group?
JESSE: Hell yes! I even have my own sidekick who gets more character development than most of your gals.
SLUTTY ONE: That's not fair! I like having sex!
JESSE: Yes, but my sidekick likes Star Wars. (beat) Cuz he's a nerd.
SLUTTY ONE: Shit, I'm out.
JESSE: Anyway, I figure circumstances could force us together for a bit, we'd banter, have an unconventional 'date' that no one would ever go on, break-up over some random slight, apologize, and then get back together.
BECA: Well, if Bring It On did it…
AUDREY: Beca, no! League members are not allowed to have sex with Treblemakers!
SURPRISINGLY, NOT THE SLUTTY ONE: I had sex with a Treblemaker.
AUDREY: GET OUT OF HERE YOU WORTHLESS WHORE! GO SELL YOUR FUNKY CUNT ON THE STREET ON YOUR WAY TO HELL TO BE EATEN ALIVE BY SATAN'S ARMY!
BECA: Holy shit, you just humiliated and slut-shamed one of your own teammates for no reason. That's literally far more evil than anything the supposed villains do.
AUDREY: Relax, it's just to set up this subplot of you not being able to date Jesse or get kicked off the squad.
JESSE: Well, I could always quit my team, since I really have no motivation to be a part of it while I'm supposed to be madly in love with Beca.
BECA: And I could always quit and join another group, since I don't care either.
CHLOE: And there's no real pay-off to this subplot. Her burgeoning relationship with Jesse is derailed for a wholly irrelevant reason.
AUDREY: Look, the fat one called a girl a slut, just laugh and move on!
***
JESSE: Anyway, Beca, time for our unearned romance. Why don't we relax and watch The Breakfast Club, or Jaws? If there's one thing us college kids love, it's movies that are thirty or more years old.
BECA: Not me. I don't watch movies. At all.
JESSE: How can you not like movies?
BECA: You forget, I've been in THE ENTIRE TWILIGHT SERIES.
"That thing you're tasting, R-Pattz? That's a career. Don't get used to it."
***
AUDREY: Okay guys, time for training. First up, you know how in Bring It On, Kirsten Dunst said "This isn't a democracy, it's a cheerocracy"? Well, we're going to do that, only putting 'a ca' in front of words and overplaying it like a meme on 4chan.
BECA: That's a ca-fucking-stupid.
AUDREY: Now you're getting it! Also, you'll all remember the musical arrangement that's never won? We're going to keep doing that.
BECA: Maybe we should change it.
AUDREY: Whoa, whoa, Commie, there's no room here for harebrained schemes like that.
BECA: I can't help it. I'm a rebel. A lone wolf. A badass. I think we should start singing contemporary songs. (beat) Like our rivals, the reigning champion a cappella group does.
AUDREY: Get outta here, Beca! I won't listen to any more rebellious, innovative strategies like copying what other people are doing!
***
CHLOE: Audrey, I checked, and at 90 minutes, this movie is at least TWICE as long as an episode of Glee!
AUDREY: Shit, we have to go character development! Everyone, find your one note! HIT IT!
WEIRD ONE: I'm really weird.
SLUTTY ONE: I have large breasts! Cuz I'm slutty! Hey, girls in the audience, use that to make fun of other large-breasted girls you don't like!
FAT ONE: I'm a walking fat joke, but I have sex with a lot of attractive men so people won't realize 90% of my lines are about how much I hate exercise and love eating.
BL&TM: I'm a lesbian, so I take every available opportunity to grope and kiss straight women against their wishes.
BECA: Do lesbians actually do that?
BL&TM: In homophobic pulp novels? Yes.
At least here, they portray lesbians as being able to do a dead-on Ace Ventura "talking butt" routine.
AUDREY: Alright, that's enough of that. As a runner-up and someone with a vaguely poor father, I am obsessed and determined to win at any cost! Except changing our musical arrangement like every other a cappella group does.
BECA: Oh yeah? How about we just ENTER THE THIRD ACT THEN!?
DONALD FAISON: Sup?
CHLOE: Donald Faison? What are you doing here?
DONALD FAISON: Fervently wishing that Scrubs Without JD had worked out. Also, after instigating a fistfight with the Treblemakers, Beca will accidentally break the Treblemakers' trophy, leading to her arrest.
BECA: Can't any of the two dozen people involved clarify what really happened?
TURK FROM SCRUBS: Don't interrupt me! You all saw Garden State? I had to put up with that Zach Braff shit for YEARS. Then, when Jesse calls Beca's father to bail her out, she'll get mad at Jesse and break-up with him even before her father tells her he won't help her become a DJ even if she does finish her year with the League.
BECA: Holy crap! (beat) So what's Dr. Cox like in real life?
***
AUDREY: Well, our routine lost Regionals, but another team cheated, so we're going onto Finals!
TEAM: Hurray technicalities!
AUDREY: And now that our arrangement has been proven not to work, there's no reason it WON'T work with a much more difficult level of competition!
BECA: That's crazy.
AUDREY: Yes. SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK!
BECA: No, I mean it's stupid.
AUDREY: STUPID LIKE A FOX!
BECA: You know what? The complete removal of my motivation hasn't been dramatic enough, so I'm just going to go behind your back to soup up the routine with some of this new-fangled DJing!
AUDREY: The team won't stand for this!
FAT ONE: As a matter of fact, we won't.
BECA: What? Really?
SLUTTY ONE: Hey, Audrey may be a delusional bulimic who polices her friends' sex lives in a bid for respectability, but she's OUR delusional bulimic who…
BECA: Okay, now I'm REALLY out!
***
BECA: Hey dad, it's the third act. Any advice?
PROFESSOR DAD: Well, you could stop hating your stepmom. We didn't even cast anyone to play that part. And, honestly, you're in college, shouldn't you be over the fact that your parents got a divorce?
BECA: Dad, chick flick, remember?
PROFESSOR DAD: Oh yeah. Well, you build a wall around your heart, keep people out, won't let people hurt you… maybe find a more interesting character flaw? Meth is underused. Try meth.
BECA: Thanks dad. That totally makes up for the time I was arrested as part of a wild brawl and your first concern was that I'd destroyed property.
PROFESSOR DAD: It's what I do.
***
AUDREY: Alright, now that Beca's gone, I think I've gotten to the bottom of the problem with our routine. It's just not traditional ENOUGH. So at finals, we're going to strip naked, dance around a maypole, sacrifice a goat to ensure a good harvest…
CHLOE: Audrey, I think you've gone mad with power.
AUDREY: Have I? Or have I go so sane with power that I realized this movie needs one big fight before we all bond together as a team and have a big dance number?
CHLOE: Come off it, this movie wouldn't have brought Christopher Mintz-Plasse in to mock Glee, just to have the very same story arc as an episode OF Glee.
CHRISTOPHER MINTZ-PLASSE: Speaking of, how is a teenage audience even supposed to recognize me when I mostly star in R-rated comedies?
AUDREY: Oh? You think I'm some formulaic quasi-antagonist who's just going to change her tune as soon as we SHARE a little? Well, I can be punk rock! I can totally be punk rock!
FAT ONE: Prove it!
Audrey vomits all over the place, because there's nothing teen girls love more than GROSS-OUT BODILY FUNCTION HUMOR.
BECA: Guys, guys! Why are you fighting! Don't you know that I broke up with Jesse and the only way to get back together with a guy in a movie is to work some minor foreshadowing from early in the relationship back into a massively important personal project, no matter how immature it is to stake several people's hopes and dreams on your own weird Hallmark card? Basically, we need to crush this or Anne Kendrick ain't getting laid. And Anne Kendrick did not strike out on four fucking Twilights just to go home empty-handed again! (beat) You're telling me I'M not Snow White? Did you see the Huntsman? His penis must be as big around as Kristen Stewart's waist! But these child-bearing hips he could tap so hard they'd have to rename the arcade game Tapper "Anne Kendrick's Va-jay-jay."
You know? Tapper? Back when video games could endorse alcohol to children, but not explicit sex, gross bodily harm, or blatant racism?
CHLOE: By the way, surgically removing my vocal nodes wasn't just an ill-delivered joke about sexually-transmitted diseases, it's also given me the ability to hit notes in the male range.
BECA: That's amazing! Let's sing completely the same as before to pay that off!
***
Meanwhile, at the Hall of Doom…
BEATER: Hey fellow semi-antagonists, you know the running gag of us treating a mid-list singer as an object of incredible devotion?
TREBLEMAKERS: Yup.
BEATER: Well, Elvis Costello's drummer's girlfriend's roommate's cover band wants me to help them knock over a bank. Wish me luck!
JESSE: Wait, as the supposed villain, shouldn't you get some sort of comeuppance? You're literally getting more of a reward than anyone else in the movie, and the only reason you're not winning the big competition is that you're bored of winning.
BEATER: Hey, I know narrative convention demands that the League gets to beat me since I've been ephemerally tormenting them the entire movie, but if we cut out my just desserts, then we can fit in another musical number!
***
WEIRD ONE: I've been virtually mute the entire movie, so now, during the big finish, I'll loudly beatbox. For a whole two nanoseconds, to make that entire subplot worthwhile.
BECA: And I'll sing Don't You Forget About Me from The Breakfast Club, despite my earlier complaint that none of our songs were from the current century!
AUDREY: And I won't vomit on anyone! (beat) Seriously, what the fuck was up with that?
ELIZABETH BANKS: And the District 12 tribute is… shit, wrong girl power announcer role. The winners of a cappella are the League! They are the first all-girl a cappella group to win, proving that women are just as good as men, so long as one of the male groups is removed from competition on a technicality and another has its lead singer quit shortly before they perform!
***
BECA: We won! Time to make out!
JESSE: But wait, what about your career as music producer? Are you going to stay in college just to hang out with your friends and compete in what amounts to a hobby, or are you going after your lifelong dream? That's the crux of your character arc and it hasn't been resolved at all!
BECA: I know that, there's been no closure whatsoever. But if we roll credits in mid-sentence, it'll seem like there was. If you want to defuse the bomb, cut the wire that—
Inside an auditorium that's supposed to look like it cost twenty dollars to rent, ELIZABETH BANKS is playing the FRED WILLARD part from a CHRISTOPHER GUEST movie.
ELIZABETH BANKS: Now that I'm done playing a thankless supporting role in the Spider-Man trilogy, I'm glad I can star in smaller, independent movies… in thankless supporting roles. Anyway, a cappella music!
BEATER and the TREBLEMAKERS, the film's boo-hiss villains, perform. Then, since the movie has no idea how someone can be a villain in a movie about a cappella singing, Beater just tells our heroes they suck. Which they do.
CHLOE: Well, according to the credits this is based on a non-fiction book about a cappella groups, so all we have to do is subtly exaggerate the real-life situations we chose to make a movie out of and—
AUDREY, the film's KIRSTEN DUNST, immediately vomits over the entire auditorium because the director forgot he wasn't making SONG MOVIE from two out of the six writers of SCARY MOVIE.
***
Six months later, BECA is going to college. She's an aggressive, in-your-face DJ played by Anne Kendrick.
Yes, that Anne Kendrick.
This is the face Anne Kendrick would make while she was planning to murder and eat your entire family. Awww, let's hug it out, family-eater!
BECA: Man, fuck fucking going to college for fucking free. I want to become a DJ! …only in a movie so white that it's about a cappella could I not be the snooty elitist scum.
AUDREY: Hello Beca, how'd you like to join our specific a cappella group? There are four of us on campus, the vaguely evil ones, the two no one cares about, and us, the League of Stereotypes You Could Only Get Away With In A Teen Movie.
WEIRD ONE: I'm the weird one.
FAT ONE: I'm the fat one.
SLUTTY ONE: I'm the slutty one.
BL&TM: I'm the Butch Lesbian and the Token Minority. (beat) We were running out of slots.
BECA: Well, I'm basically the Eliza Dushku character from Bring It On, talented but resenting the specific use of my talents the film is about, yet forced into it by a contrived plot device.
AUDREY: Oh, an Eliza Dushku character? You'll fit right into the League! Now, would you like to be uncomfortably sexualized or just, ya know… 'sex-positive'?
***
Beca takes a shower so the boyfriends in the audience can briefly stop wondering how watching Glee could come to this.
BECA: Top 40 hit, la la la, la la laaaaaa.
CHLOE: Oh my god, you're super-talented and pretty and you should totally join my a cappella group so we can spend all our time together!
BECA: Well, this kooky meet-cute is starting to seem overtly homoerotic. Can anything cut the unresolved sexual tension here?
NAKED GUY: Hi, I was taking a shower with Chloe and I'd just like to say that you really are a good singer, Beca.
CHLOE: Thanks for reiterating my heterosexuality.
BECA: And mine!
NAKED GUY: Thanks. I'll now leave the movie, never to returnnnnnnn.
***
BECA: Ha, join an a cappella group? Over my dead contrived plot point.
PROFESSOR DAD: Hi Beca, I know you're still not over our vague estrangement issues, but I just want you to give some random college activity one year and if you still hate it at the end, I'll help you move to LA and become a DJ.
BECA: Screw your ultimatums, dad! I'm a strong, independent woman! I don't need your help to follow my dreams! (beat) Wait, I guess I do. A cappella it is!
***
CHLOE: Bad news, Audrey! It looks like most of the auditions we're accepting for the League are awful. It'll take some real work to whip them into shape.
AUDREY: Relax, we'll just do a montage so they all become awesome, then the only issue will be what song we awesomely perform.
CHLOE: Isn't that like a Chuck Norris movie where Chuck doesn't have to train for an underground fighting tournament, he just has to decide what his entrance music is?
AUDREY: No. Nothing is like Chuck Norris except Chuck Norris.
And ninja pirate robot THIS JOKE IS SO OLD I'M BORED ALREADY LET'S JUST STOP WITH IT OKAY?
Beca arrives late and performs her own song, because she's the protagonist.
CHLOE: Holy crap, that blew my mind! Although literally all you had to do was show up, as we just accepted everyone.
BECA: I'm not so good at this rebel business.
CHLOE: Well, Anne Kendrick.
JESSE: Oh hey, didn't Eliza Dushku have a love interest in Bring It On?
BECA: Oh hey, it's that guy whose introduction curiously mirrored my own. You really going to have your own arc about joining your own a cappella group?
JESSE: Hell yes! I even have my own sidekick who gets more character development than most of your gals.
SLUTTY ONE: That's not fair! I like having sex!
JESSE: Yes, but my sidekick likes Star Wars. (beat) Cuz he's a nerd.
SLUTTY ONE: Shit, I'm out.
JESSE: Anyway, I figure circumstances could force us together for a bit, we'd banter, have an unconventional 'date' that no one would ever go on, break-up over some random slight, apologize, and then get back together.
BECA: Well, if Bring It On did it…
AUDREY: Beca, no! League members are not allowed to have sex with Treblemakers!
SURPRISINGLY, NOT THE SLUTTY ONE: I had sex with a Treblemaker.
AUDREY: GET OUT OF HERE YOU WORTHLESS WHORE! GO SELL YOUR FUNKY CUNT ON THE STREET ON YOUR WAY TO HELL TO BE EATEN ALIVE BY SATAN'S ARMY!
BECA: Holy shit, you just humiliated and slut-shamed one of your own teammates for no reason. That's literally far more evil than anything the supposed villains do.
AUDREY: Relax, it's just to set up this subplot of you not being able to date Jesse or get kicked off the squad.
JESSE: Well, I could always quit my team, since I really have no motivation to be a part of it while I'm supposed to be madly in love with Beca.
BECA: And I could always quit and join another group, since I don't care either.
CHLOE: And there's no real pay-off to this subplot. Her burgeoning relationship with Jesse is derailed for a wholly irrelevant reason.
AUDREY: Look, the fat one called a girl a slut, just laugh and move on!
***
JESSE: Anyway, Beca, time for our unearned romance. Why don't we relax and watch The Breakfast Club, or Jaws? If there's one thing us college kids love, it's movies that are thirty or more years old.
BECA: Not me. I don't watch movies. At all.
JESSE: How can you not like movies?
BECA: You forget, I've been in THE ENTIRE TWILIGHT SERIES.
"That thing you're tasting, R-Pattz? That's a career. Don't get used to it."
***
AUDREY: Okay guys, time for training. First up, you know how in Bring It On, Kirsten Dunst said "This isn't a democracy, it's a cheerocracy"? Well, we're going to do that, only putting 'a ca' in front of words and overplaying it like a meme on 4chan.
BECA: That's a ca-fucking-stupid.
AUDREY: Now you're getting it! Also, you'll all remember the musical arrangement that's never won? We're going to keep doing that.
BECA: Maybe we should change it.
AUDREY: Whoa, whoa, Commie, there's no room here for harebrained schemes like that.
BECA: I can't help it. I'm a rebel. A lone wolf. A badass. I think we should start singing contemporary songs. (beat) Like our rivals, the reigning champion a cappella group does.
AUDREY: Get outta here, Beca! I won't listen to any more rebellious, innovative strategies like copying what other people are doing!
***
CHLOE: Audrey, I checked, and at 90 minutes, this movie is at least TWICE as long as an episode of Glee!
AUDREY: Shit, we have to go character development! Everyone, find your one note! HIT IT!
WEIRD ONE: I'm really weird.
SLUTTY ONE: I have large breasts! Cuz I'm slutty! Hey, girls in the audience, use that to make fun of other large-breasted girls you don't like!
FAT ONE: I'm a walking fat joke, but I have sex with a lot of attractive men so people won't realize 90% of my lines are about how much I hate exercise and love eating.
BL&TM: I'm a lesbian, so I take every available opportunity to grope and kiss straight women against their wishes.
BECA: Do lesbians actually do that?
BL&TM: In homophobic pulp novels? Yes.
At least here, they portray lesbians as being able to do a dead-on Ace Ventura "talking butt" routine.
AUDREY: Alright, that's enough of that. As a runner-up and someone with a vaguely poor father, I am obsessed and determined to win at any cost! Except changing our musical arrangement like every other a cappella group does.
BECA: Oh yeah? How about we just ENTER THE THIRD ACT THEN!?
DONALD FAISON: Sup?
CHLOE: Donald Faison? What are you doing here?
DONALD FAISON: Fervently wishing that Scrubs Without JD had worked out. Also, after instigating a fistfight with the Treblemakers, Beca will accidentally break the Treblemakers' trophy, leading to her arrest.
BECA: Can't any of the two dozen people involved clarify what really happened?
TURK FROM SCRUBS: Don't interrupt me! You all saw Garden State? I had to put up with that Zach Braff shit for YEARS. Then, when Jesse calls Beca's father to bail her out, she'll get mad at Jesse and break-up with him even before her father tells her he won't help her become a DJ even if she does finish her year with the League.
BECA: Holy crap! (beat) So what's Dr. Cox like in real life?
***
AUDREY: Well, our routine lost Regionals, but another team cheated, so we're going onto Finals!
TEAM: Hurray technicalities!
AUDREY: And now that our arrangement has been proven not to work, there's no reason it WON'T work with a much more difficult level of competition!
BECA: That's crazy.
AUDREY: Yes. SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK!
BECA: No, I mean it's stupid.
AUDREY: STUPID LIKE A FOX!
BECA: You know what? The complete removal of my motivation hasn't been dramatic enough, so I'm just going to go behind your back to soup up the routine with some of this new-fangled DJing!
AUDREY: The team won't stand for this!
FAT ONE: As a matter of fact, we won't.
BECA: What? Really?
SLUTTY ONE: Hey, Audrey may be a delusional bulimic who polices her friends' sex lives in a bid for respectability, but she's OUR delusional bulimic who…
BECA: Okay, now I'm REALLY out!
***
BECA: Hey dad, it's the third act. Any advice?
PROFESSOR DAD: Well, you could stop hating your stepmom. We didn't even cast anyone to play that part. And, honestly, you're in college, shouldn't you be over the fact that your parents got a divorce?
BECA: Dad, chick flick, remember?
PROFESSOR DAD: Oh yeah. Well, you build a wall around your heart, keep people out, won't let people hurt you… maybe find a more interesting character flaw? Meth is underused. Try meth.
BECA: Thanks dad. That totally makes up for the time I was arrested as part of a wild brawl and your first concern was that I'd destroyed property.
PROFESSOR DAD: It's what I do.
***
AUDREY: Alright, now that Beca's gone, I think I've gotten to the bottom of the problem with our routine. It's just not traditional ENOUGH. So at finals, we're going to strip naked, dance around a maypole, sacrifice a goat to ensure a good harvest…
CHLOE: Audrey, I think you've gone mad with power.
AUDREY: Have I? Or have I go so sane with power that I realized this movie needs one big fight before we all bond together as a team and have a big dance number?
CHLOE: Come off it, this movie wouldn't have brought Christopher Mintz-Plasse in to mock Glee, just to have the very same story arc as an episode OF Glee.
CHRISTOPHER MINTZ-PLASSE: Speaking of, how is a teenage audience even supposed to recognize me when I mostly star in R-rated comedies?
AUDREY: Oh? You think I'm some formulaic quasi-antagonist who's just going to change her tune as soon as we SHARE a little? Well, I can be punk rock! I can totally be punk rock!
FAT ONE: Prove it!
Audrey vomits all over the place, because there's nothing teen girls love more than GROSS-OUT BODILY FUNCTION HUMOR.
BECA: Guys, guys! Why are you fighting! Don't you know that I broke up with Jesse and the only way to get back together with a guy in a movie is to work some minor foreshadowing from early in the relationship back into a massively important personal project, no matter how immature it is to stake several people's hopes and dreams on your own weird Hallmark card? Basically, we need to crush this or Anne Kendrick ain't getting laid. And Anne Kendrick did not strike out on four fucking Twilights just to go home empty-handed again! (beat) You're telling me I'M not Snow White? Did you see the Huntsman? His penis must be as big around as Kristen Stewart's waist! But these child-bearing hips he could tap so hard they'd have to rename the arcade game Tapper "Anne Kendrick's Va-jay-jay."
You know? Tapper? Back when video games could endorse alcohol to children, but not explicit sex, gross bodily harm, or blatant racism?
CHLOE: By the way, surgically removing my vocal nodes wasn't just an ill-delivered joke about sexually-transmitted diseases, it's also given me the ability to hit notes in the male range.
BECA: That's amazing! Let's sing completely the same as before to pay that off!
***
Meanwhile, at the Hall of Doom…
BEATER: Hey fellow semi-antagonists, you know the running gag of us treating a mid-list singer as an object of incredible devotion?
TREBLEMAKERS: Yup.
BEATER: Well, Elvis Costello's drummer's girlfriend's roommate's cover band wants me to help them knock over a bank. Wish me luck!
JESSE: Wait, as the supposed villain, shouldn't you get some sort of comeuppance? You're literally getting more of a reward than anyone else in the movie, and the only reason you're not winning the big competition is that you're bored of winning.
BEATER: Hey, I know narrative convention demands that the League gets to beat me since I've been ephemerally tormenting them the entire movie, but if we cut out my just desserts, then we can fit in another musical number!
***
WEIRD ONE: I've been virtually mute the entire movie, so now, during the big finish, I'll loudly beatbox. For a whole two nanoseconds, to make that entire subplot worthwhile.
BECA: And I'll sing Don't You Forget About Me from The Breakfast Club, despite my earlier complaint that none of our songs were from the current century!
AUDREY: And I won't vomit on anyone! (beat) Seriously, what the fuck was up with that?
ELIZABETH BANKS: And the District 12 tribute is… shit, wrong girl power announcer role. The winners of a cappella are the League! They are the first all-girl a cappella group to win, proving that women are just as good as men, so long as one of the male groups is removed from competition on a technicality and another has its lead singer quit shortly before they perform!
***
BECA: We won! Time to make out!
JESSE: But wait, what about your career as music producer? Are you going to stay in college just to hang out with your friends and compete in what amounts to a hobby, or are you going after your lifelong dream? That's the crux of your character arc and it hasn't been resolved at all!
BECA: I know that, there's been no closure whatsoever. But if we roll credits in mid-sentence, it'll seem like there was. If you want to defuse the bomb, cut the wire that—
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Date: 2015-05-05 05:05 am (UTC)