Two movies I didn't want to watch, but enjoyed more than I expected to.
Pitch Perfect We've seen this movie a thousand times. It's every cliched teen/college competition movie rolled into one. It stole liberally from things like Krush Groove, Step Up, Stomp the Yard, Drumline (which was interesting in its own way), You Got Served, Bring It On, School of Rock and every other trite movie of that ilk. The characters were stereotypical, stale even. The story a complete ripoff.
But the general likability of most of the cast saved this bland effort. Anna Kendrick did a good job with terrible lines, atrocious setups and ridiculous situations. The creepy Chinese girl who ate her own twin had a good line or two. Brittany Snow was adequate. The two competition announcers (one was Elizabeth Banks) hammed it way up, basically letting the viewing audience know the entire premise was absurd and a joke. The actors were able to rise above the terrible writing, poor directing and shoddy cinematography.
The one I didn't like was the fat blonde one. Granted she's less offensively annoying than bug-eyed, vein-popping, obnoxiously loud hippo Melissa McCarthy who really has only one grating character, but if the Fat Amy goo tub hopes to have a legitimate career she's going to have to come up with something other than ripping her shirt off (which was, I hear, the entire premise of her probably soon-to-be cancelled sitcom). Ignorantly enough the blonde Australian compares the blisteringly low ratings of her brain-dead show to the series arc of Seinfeld -- which had layers and more than one repetitive joke. So she's dumb, too. Hated her in this movie and pretty much hate her in everything she's in.
Still, Anna Kendrick and her frequently teased cleavage rallied this film. (see below)
Warm BodiesWarm Bodies featured a blond Australian import. The antithesis of Fat Patricia, the blonde in Warm Bodies is the absolutely adorable Teresa Palmer. (See below) She can look a little Kristen Stewarty at times, but she's got 100x the acting chops of the Twilight twit. Then again so does Scott Baio, so there's that.
Different take on a zombie story. Some sort of ridiculous plotlines and some silly action, but as it was designed for teens coming off the Twilight high and searching for another fix, it worked for what it was. It was ten million times better than all the Twilight movies put together. Then again, so was Caddyshack 2 (and that movie didn't even exist) so there's that.
Neither movie is what I'd call "must see" or even "waste time with" but I watched both and didn't die.
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