College student Beca knows she does not want to be part of a clique, but that's exactly where she finds herself after arriving at her new school. Thrust in among mean gals, nice gals and just plain weird gals, Beca finds that the only thing they have in common is how well they sing together. She takes the women of the group out of their comfort zone of traditional arrangements and into a world of amazing harmonic combinations in a fight to the top of college music competitions.
06 Jul Pitch Perfect (2012)
Packaged Energy
I recall watching ‘Fame’ when it came out. It surely was not the first film that was a performance about a performance with a personal quest overlain. But it was the first in my film life. There have since been hundreds of these where some lone teen or group strives while we watch and from time to time gives us an earnest show.
Some time ago, I devised a rule, an observed law, that states when you have three or more layers of abstraction, the layers are the same perceived abstract distance from each other — or we perceive them to be so.
So in this case, we have us, and the film, and separately, the film and the performances within. The way this is used by master filmmakers — think the first Pirates of the Caribbean — is the distance that registers is the one you see. In Pirates it is the real pirate world distanced from the magical one. That distance is quite close, which pulls us as external audience closer to the world that Depp defines. This is one reason why the first movie works better than the sequels which merge the magic layer.
Once you know what to look for, you will see it frequently. And here as well.
This doesn’t work for me because the ‘real’ layer is too much like the performance layer — same as the later ‘Pirates’ — and that supposed real layer is too artificial for me. Yes, I know there is an audience for teen dramas where stereotypes are made extreme. I’m not there.
Posted in 2024
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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