Review of Pitch Perfect 3 (2017) by Roger C — 27 Dec 2017

Supposedly, this is the final Pitch Perfect movie. With Hollywood, it's impossible to tell, since they always swear they're ending a series only to bring it back. I hope they're telling the truth this time. Pitch Perfect 3 left me convinced that there does not need to be a fourth one.

A lot of Pitch Perfect 3 is not terribly different from its predecessors. That's actually a good thing. The best part about these movies is the a capella. Pitch Perfect 3's musical sequences turn even songs I hate into good music, and they're well-choreographed, too. The humor, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. There are plenty of jokes that I thought were pretty clever, but there were a lot that were unsubtle. That's standard fare for Pitch Perfect, and some of those lines were still funny, but I would have preferred something a little more witty than "with a side of white privilege." Some gags are also overdone, including a riff-off that spirals out of control and a completely uncalled for Rube Goldberg gag.

It's the plot, though, where Pitch Perfect 3 truly goes off the rails. The movie features an over-the-top and ludicrous side plot. When a movie is only an hour and a half long, it cannot afford to indulge in distractions like this, so Pitch Perfect 3 ends up suffering from it. Other distracting elements include the dreamlike filter used for flashbacks and the lighting, which gets pretty poor in any scene that requires darkness. The true highlight of the movie doesn't come until the ending, which uses Pitch Perfect's best parts to land on a satisfying note to send the series off. Too bad the rest of the movie wasn't as good.