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Pitch Perfect | 2012 | PG-13 | - 5.3.4
The world of college a cappella music competition is shaken when a young woman (Anna Kendrick) joins Barden University's all-girl group that's full of misfits. Together, they change the competition with conflict and humor. Also with Skylar Astin, Ben Platt, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp, Rebel Wilson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Alexis Knapp and Adam Devine. Directed by Jason Moore. [1:52]
SEX/NUDITY 5 - A woman walks into the foreground wearing a T-shirt under a jacket; she pulls the jacket back and complains that people say her chest looks like baloney (the T-shirt is white and she is braless, so her areolas show through the stretched shirt). Many college-aged women wear short shirts that reveal bare abdomens and short-shorts that reveal most of their legs. Women wear skin-tight jeans and leggings that reveal curves of hips, buttocks and legs. Women wear tank tops and low-cut blouses that reveal cleavage. Two women reveal significant cleavage throughout the film. A woman wearing a swimming suit stands in a swimming pool and we see cleavage; beside her are three shirtless men. We see 8 men in a hot tub, revealing bare shoulders, arms and upper chests. We see a pregnant woman with a swollen belly under a T-shirt. We see a male swim team member wearing tight swim trunks that reveal his bare chest, arms and thighs.
► A man and a woman kiss briefly.
► In a dorm shower, we see a set of male and a set of female feet under a shower stall door; another woman enters another stall and we see bare shoulders and upper arms when she pulls a shower curtain around herself, and a man appears at the stall doorway and we see his full bare chest, shoulders and arms as one of the women gasps and the scene ends.
► While singing on stage, a woman pushes her bosom up with her hands and a few times rubs her hand down her groin and inside thigh. Three men raise their T-shirts in different scenes to reveal abdomens and we see tattoos on their arms. A men's singing group rips open their shirts in a long shot and we see three or four bare abdomens.
► A woman's song group dances suggestively on stage, rolling their hips; an overweight singer pulls her shirt open at the end of a number and is shown wearing a tank top that reveals cleavage; a man picks up a handheld microphone and taps the woman on the chest several times as they argue briefly. Women exercise, running up and down stadium steps and holding their bosoms to keep from bouncing.
► Male and female groups sing phrases from sexually suggestive lyrics: Like a Virgin, S&M, Let's Talk About Sex, I'll Make Love to You, Feels Like the First Time, No Diggity. A song titled "Toner" is about which female singers make jokes about a "musical boner." One woman accuses another woman of having a visible toner (implying sexual arousal) about a male singer and the accused woman makes a crude anatomical reference.
► At a radio station, the manager meets a new male and females interns and tells them not to have sex on the desk. A woman expels a member from her a cappella girl-group for being "Treble-boned," meaning the member had sex with a member of the Treble Makers male group. A women's song group leader tells the members that having sex with the rival men's group will result in immediate expulsion from the women's group. A woman tells a man that she would rather visit a gynecologist than kiss him or watch a movie. At a singing audition, the MC announces that using music to handle sexual confusion will not work, as he wiggles all his fingers around his groin area. Suggestions are made that a woman is lesbian and she admits it later and she is shown staring at other women's buttocks and grinning. We hear that a woman is sexually promiscuous, but do not see any evidence. On the air, a singing competition announcer says a high-voiced tenor's testicles have not descended and that women cannot sing or be doctors; a female announcer replies that he is a misogynist and the woman looks at a men's group dancing and says she has to "freshen up downtown," implying sexual arousal, to which the male announcer asks, "Can I help?" as the scene ends. A woman enters college and receives a rape whistle with instructions to use it only if rape occurs.
VIOLENCE/GORE 3 - After a music competition, a male college group and an alumni male group begin a fistfight: an older man asks to be punched in the head and hit in the groin, and two women run up to the fight and hit him in both places; a trophy is thrown out of the hands of one of the women and smashes through a glass window when a police officer approaches and the camera cuts to the woman being released from campus detention.
► Two scenes feature a college-aged woman singing on stage and vomiting profusely on to the stage and off the front of the stage; we see a video of the event as vomit hits the stage and the camera. Another scene shows the same woman vomiting massively on the floor of a gym; another woman falls into the vomit and does "snow angels" while another woman drops a pitch pipe into the vomit in a close-up.
► A college-aged woman and her father argue a few times about her decision to skip college and her dislike for her stepmother. A man and a woman argue about whether they have a relationship or not. A female singer speaks with friends who just stare at her as she says, "I ate my twin in the womb." A female girl-group leader is rude to her members, telling them to shut-up, that they know nothing, and that they are not good enough for her; she argues with several of the girls loudly, expels two of them and another one quits. Male a cappella members growl like pro wrestlers when they see other singers on campus; a member tells a friend in the group jokingly that he wants to choke and kill him.
► A female a cappella group drinks "blood" at an initiation; it is just punch. A man throws a sundae and a burrito onto an overweight woman on the street from out of a tour bus and the woman yells, "Help, I've been shot!" while another woman licks some of the food off the first woman's face. A woman says that she has vocal cord nodules and needs surgery and we later see her in a hospital bed receiving her release from the hospital.
► We hear that one character always takes a couple of morning dumps (defecation).
LANGUAGE 4 - 7 scatological terms, 11 anatomical terms, 16 mild obscenities, exclamations (shut up), name-calling (lame, weird, nerds, step-monster, girly, garbage, Black Beauty, slut, jerk), stereotypical references to men, women, singers, college students, control freaks, fat people, sci-fi fans, nerds, parents, Asians, Whites, Jews, 1 religious profanity, 6 religious exclamations.
SUBSTANCE USE - A woman tells a man that considering kissing him is like considering using crystal meth and deciding against it, and a man says a woman's bad singing voice is the result of medical marijuana. Four scenes feature college men and women drinking beer at parties, a man becomes drunk and we see him stagger and hear him slur his speech, a woman shimmies and says beer is jiggle juice, and several men in a hot tub drink alcoholic drinks.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Competition, winning, disappointment, loneliness, friendships, rivalries, college life, rudeness, bullying, trust, cooperation, compromise.
MESSAGE - People are happier when they learn to get along and succeed.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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