Rebel Wilson’s new pop band comedy is a total disaster…
Rebel Wilson’s avert-your-eyes new comedy “Girl Group,” which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, provides you new appreciation for the artistry that went into “Pitch Perfect.”
film review
GIRL GROUP
Running time: 103 minutes. Not yet rated.
It’s virtually impolite to check the two — “Pitch Perfect” is a intelligent and full of life romp while “Girl Group” is a real stinker.
But given their mutual presence of Wilson, who also writes and directs this mangled mess, and the recycled story of younger feminine underdogs making an attempt to win a singing contest, a face-off is unavoidable.
Or maybe my thoughts wandered a lot to “Pitch Perfect” while watching the new film purely as a coping mechanism for the cinematic trauma I used to be enduring. Who’s to say?
The chief distinction is that this time Wilson will get promoted from wacky sidekick Fat Amy to the main event, besides her schtick stays precisely the same. You can in all probability hear the Aussie’s dry and indifferent however blunt deliveries in your head as you read a subpar joke such as, “When I saw you, I thought: ‘a bunch of reject Pokemon.’ ”
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Rebel Wilson wrote, directs and stars in “Girl Group,” which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Wilson’s recognizable type is humorous when used to interrupt up a dramatic confrontation or loosen up an emotional second, as in “Bridesmaids.” However, the actress is deathly allergic to vulnerability. There is not one trustworthy second in “Girl Group.” So what we get instead is a mashup of low cost gags, empty empowerment and songs you pray will end.
Wilson performs Tassie, the former member of a UK Spice Girls-ish pop group called, ugh, Gurlfriends. They met in class in 1997, bought found and skyrocketed to superstardom with the single “Summer Snog.” It will get worse and worse.
There are a handful of authentic tunes sprinkled in right here alongside hits like Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor” and Chappell Roan’s “Hot To Go,” none of that are top-drawer. Believable new music is what makes comedies like “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Best in Show” and even “Josie and the Pussycats” work, though they’re affectionately mocking bands. “Girl Group” didn’t get the memo.
In the aughts, Tassie earns a hard-to-shake popularity for misbehavior — scarfing down booze, popping tablets and getting DUIs. Twenty years later, the fed-up other members (which embody Mel C. from the Spice Girls — oh, how the spicy have fallen) ask her to not be part of them on their worldwide reunion tour.
They determine to exchange her with a diva singer performed by Nicole Scherzinger, who’s principally right here to twerk.
Wilson attends the film’s Toronto International Film Festival world premiere. AP Photo/Joel C Ryan
After yet another automotive accident, Tassie is pressured to work community service, which interprets to unhappily mentoring a quintet of misfit ladies who wish to sing together. So, now there’s some “Sister Act 2” in the combine.
The factor is, the buddies are already fairly good from the starting. The first music they sing for Tassie is fairly fairly. They’re a little nerdy, positive, and one is too loud, however they’re hardly hopeless.
We’re not particularly satisfied that Wilson wants to show them how you can be stars; however, we’re lifeless sure she wanted to rewrite her script to have some precise characters in it.
This isn’t like “The House Bunny,” wherein each outcast of the sorority had a distinct and forceful character. Everybody right here is an inoffensive clone. I bought a sense that Wilson wasn’t keen to let other forged members be funnier than her. That consists of, sinfully, the underused Jennifer Coolidge as Tassie’s supervisor.
Wilson (above) brings her acquainted comedic persona to the position of a washed-up pop star. Getty Images
The film is about more than just training them as much as increase their vanity and study a lesson. Tassie hears about a competitors to search out the next nice lady group and, determined for money, indicators them up. I used to be reasonably skeptical of this battle, as there are hardly any pop lady bands of this sort left. It’s like looking for the next nice stegosaurus.
All the traditional tropes of this style are alive and unwell. The girls have principally blonde rival opponents whose only other noticeable trait is that they take aerobics lessons.
And one in all the mothers, a restaurant employee, vocally disapproves of her daughter losing her precious time on music.
“No! You are too smart for singing!” she actually says in the yr of our Lord 2026.
Pretty a lot all the blame for this pitchy film falls on Wilson. The writing, which might’t even successfully rip off movies that have been made a whole lot of occasions, places the tough in tough draft, in fact. But her cut-corners course is just as big a calamity. There are stagey scenes of, say, the scrappy crew strolling into a hallway from a room the place you possibly can virtually hear Wilson yelling, “Action!”
And the big present at the end, even with its live performance lighting and rainfall impact, is edited in a metronomic approach that places us to sleep instead of perking us up.
Spice up your life? Spice up your film!
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