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Pitch Perfect
Jan. 12th, 2013 05:20 pmI've given up trying to sleep on flights: I have developed restless leg syndrome, and in addition my lower back tends to spasm when I'm sat for too long so every doze is interrupted by a rather rude awakening. Better not to try.
So instead I settled down to watching back to back movies.
1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower: lovely and moving, Very triggery for anyone who has experienced abuse, but supportive and honest in having no perfect answers.
2. The Decoy Bride: nice little rom com with David Tennant. Less believable than your average Dr. Who script, but what the hell.
3. Four Christmasses with Reese Witherspoon once again proving that she had one really stunning movie in her. Half way through I realised I'd seen it before and fast fwded. Usually I like re-watching, but this was painful.
4. Pitch Perfect; cliched movie about Acappella group in the doldrums. My beef with all these Turnaround movies is that they *always win* in the competition at the end. They would be so much better if they came second, or even just high placed, back on the road rather than instant success. It doesn't help that as is too often the case with these movies, the "final show" never seems to be as good as the competition / rival team we've seen moments before.
There are some good check marks; when characters have a "tell us your deep secret" bonding session the "we thought she was a lesbian" casually mentions her sexuality as context for her gambling problem (ie "it started after I split up with my girlfriend) and there is a quick pan to another girl in the troup who whispers "I still love you". "Fat Amy, I call myself that before you twiglets can" confesses to actually being named Patricia.
But there is one horrendous elephant in the room: the anti-semitism.
Fat Amy is Australian. At one point she approaches the "JDS" stall at the freshers' mart and proceeds to make jokes. Both the boys manning the stall wear hearing aids. No apparent reason for this and I wouldn't mention it but it appears to contribute to their weirdness. Amy comments on her hair as being a Jewish pony tail (no idea why). Every time she makes one of these comments she gets a Look from a team mate, but no one ever calls her out. I think the directors *expect* the audience to have the *right* reaction, but I'm not sure what that reaction is supposed to be. It doesn't stop Amy being presented as a likeable character, yet she never stops doing it, because no one ever tells her it's offensive.
So instead I settled down to watching back to back movies.
1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower: lovely and moving, Very triggery for anyone who has experienced abuse, but supportive and honest in having no perfect answers.
2. The Decoy Bride: nice little rom com with David Tennant. Less believable than your average Dr. Who script, but what the hell.
3. Four Christmasses with Reese Witherspoon once again proving that she had one really stunning movie in her. Half way through I realised I'd seen it before and fast fwded. Usually I like re-watching, but this was painful.
4. Pitch Perfect; cliched movie about Acappella group in the doldrums. My beef with all these Turnaround movies is that they *always win* in the competition at the end. They would be so much better if they came second, or even just high placed, back on the road rather than instant success. It doesn't help that as is too often the case with these movies, the "final show" never seems to be as good as the competition / rival team we've seen moments before.
There are some good check marks; when characters have a "tell us your deep secret" bonding session the "we thought she was a lesbian" casually mentions her sexuality as context for her gambling problem (ie "it started after I split up with my girlfriend) and there is a quick pan to another girl in the troup who whispers "I still love you". "Fat Amy, I call myself that before you twiglets can" confesses to actually being named Patricia.
But there is one horrendous elephant in the room: the anti-semitism.
Fat Amy is Australian. At one point she approaches the "JDS" stall at the freshers' mart and proceeds to make jokes. Both the boys manning the stall wear hearing aids. No apparent reason for this and I wouldn't mention it but it appears to contribute to their weirdness. Amy comments on her hair as being a Jewish pony tail (no idea why). Every time she makes one of these comments she gets a Look from a team mate, but no one ever calls her out. I think the directors *expect* the audience to have the *right* reaction, but I'm not sure what that reaction is supposed to be. It doesn't stop Amy being presented as a likeable character, yet she never stops doing it, because no one ever tells her it's offensive.
