You know the best cure for a St. Patrick’s Day hangover? The Rock. That’s what he told me, anyway, and who am I to argue? His better-than-expected Jumanji comes out this week, as does the better-than-you-heard Downsizing and the worse-the-third-time Pitch Perfect 3. Let us help you choose.
Click the film title for a full review.
Helping you separate naughty from nice with this weekend’s movie options, The Screening Room looks at Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Pitch Perfect 3, Downsizing, Darkest Hour, The Greatest Showman as well as your new options in home entertainment. Join us!
Listen to the full podcast HERE.
by Hope Madden
Did anyone think to themselves this Christmas season, I wonder what those acapella singers from Pitch Perfect are doing now?
Me, either. And yet, Pitch Perfect 3 hits theaters this weekend.
The Bellas have mostly graduated from college by now, dealing with careers, the daily grind and wishing they were still singing in an all-girl, no-instrument band. So they take their talents to the USO to compete with a country group, a rock band and a hip hop duo to land the opening slot for DJ Khaled.
I know that almost sounds like a plot, and there is this side bit about an international criminal and a kidnapping, but honest to God, this is the most disposable, pointless movie of the season. (Full disclosure—I haven’t seen Father Figures yet.)
Director Trish Sie can’t find a pace or visual style to suit the project, which only emphasizes the weakness in any shadow of a storyline.
Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson, along with most of the Bellas, return to vocal action. There’s nothing fresh or appealing about the music, but if that’s your bag, there you go.
Wilson’s Fat Amy still says amusingly inappropriate things, as do the always welcome John Michael Higgins (“We’ll stick to you like mom jeans to a camel toe,”) and Elizabeth Banks. Why are the announcers of the college acapella championships involved in a USO gig?
Writers Key Cannon and Mike White realize this makes little sense, so they devise a knowingly ludicrous excuse for it. In fact, it’s this self-referential tendency that provides the film’s only clever laughs.
Well, “laugh” is a strong word, but there are passably enjoyable moments. The rest of it is mainly insufferable: catty, meandering and needless.
