Pitch Perfect 3

One wonders if Oscar-nominee Anna Kendrick approaches her work in Pitch Perfect 3 the way Dante in Kevin Smith's Clerks approached his extra shift: "I'm not even supposed to be here today!"

While Kendrick trudges through like a true professional, the spunky enthusiasm she displayed in the first two Pitch Perfect movies is missing. It's easy to see why. Screenwriter Kay Cannon (who directed the previous installments) hasn't come up with a credible substitute for college a cappella competitions, so she and director Trish Sie fill much of the movie's surplus dead time with lots of montages and shots of the Bellas walking toward the camera in slow motion.

Cannon is an alumna of 30 Rock, but you'd never know it here. Few of the wisecracks land, and she brings out nothing new in the Bellas who aren't Beca (Kendrick), Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) or Aubrey (Anna Camp).

Hailee Steinfeld carried Edge of Seventeen and True Grit, but Cannon gives her character, Emily, almost nothing to do except change her hairstyle and singing costumes.

What there is of a new plot involves each of the Bellas discovering that life outside of college isn't that rewarding or fun. Beca is working as a music producer but quits her gig after being told by one-too-many artistes that her able mixing is ruining their genius. But Aubrey's father is an Army general, so the Bellas get a gig on an USO tour through Europe with DJ Khaled.

In an attempt to give the torpid storyline some energy, the Bellas have to compete with a country band and an all-female group of rockers ickily named Evermoist to earn an opening slot for DJ Khaled's TV special. Even if your idea of a weighty plot dilemma is whether the Bellas should take up instruments and write their own material, Pitch Perfect 3 might leave you unsatisfied. John Lithgow turns up as Fat Amy's shady tycoon of a father and embarrasses himself trying to sound Australian.

Speaking of unconvincing, the Bellas wail and harmonize and are heard in large amphitheaters even though some of them aren't using microphones. Cannon also makes the audience feel as if they've become clairvoyant. A large hotel suite features a beehive for fresh honey, and before you can say, "Chekhov's gun," somebody knocks it over, sending the swarm all over the room.

Director Sie made some imaginative music videos for OK Go, but here she seems constrained. Movies like Pitch Perfect 3 are supposed to take people away from the drudgery of ordinary life, not to remind them of it.

MovieStyle on 12/22/2017