Rebel Wilsons new pop band comedy is a total…
Rebel Wilson’s avert-your-eyes new comedy “Girl Group,” which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, offers 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 examine the 2 — “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 attempting to win a singing contest, a face-off is unavoidable.
Or maybe my thoughts wandered so 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 most likely hear the Aussie’s dry and indifferent but 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 fashion is humorous when used to break up a dramatic confrontation or lighten up an emotional second, as in “Bridesmaids.” However, the actress is deathly allergic to vulnerability. There is not one sincere 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 previous member of a UK Spice Girls-ish pop group called, ugh, Gurlfriends. They met in faculty in 1997, obtained found and skyrocketed to superstardom with the only “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 fame for misbehavior — scarfing down booze, popping capsules and getting DUIs. Twenty years later, the fed-up other members (which embrace Mel C. from the Spice Girls — oh, how the spicy have fallen) ask her not to be a part of them on their worldwide reunion tour.
They determine to substitute her with a diva singer performed by Nicole Scherzinger, who’s largely right here to twerk.
Wilson attends the film’s Toronto International Film Festival world premiere. AP Photo/Joel C Ryan
After yet another car accident, Tassie is pressured to work group service, which interprets to unhappily mentoring a quintet of misfit women who like to sing together. So, now there’s some “Sister Act 2” in the combo.
The factor is, the chums are already fairly good from the start. The first music they sing for Tassie is fairly fairly. They’re a little nerdy, sure, and one is too loud, but they’re hardly hopeless.
We’re not particularly satisfied that Wilson wants to train them how to be stars; however, we’re useless sure she needed to rewrite her script to have some precise characters in it.
This isn’t like “The House Bunny,” in which each outcast of the sorority had a distinct and forceful character. Everybody right here is an inoffensive clone. I obtained a sense that Wilson wasn’t keen to let other forged members be funnier than her. That contains, sinfully, the underused Jennifer Coolidge as Tassie’s supervisor.
Wilson (above) brings her acquainted comedic persona to the function of a washed-up pop star. Getty Images
The film is about more than just training them up to increase their shallowness and study a lesson. Tassie hears about a competitors to discover the next great lady group and, determined for money, indicators them up. I used to be somewhat skeptical of this battle, as there are hardly any pop lady bands of this sort left. It’s like attempting to discover the next great stegosaurus.
All the standard tropes of this style are alive and unwell. The girls have largely blonde rival opponents whose only other noticeable trait is that they take aerobics lessons.
And one of the mothers, a restaurant employee, vocally disapproves of her daughter losing her priceless time on music.
“No! You are too smart for singing!” she actually says in the 12 months of our Lord 2026.
Pretty a lot all the blame for this pitchy film falls on Wilson. The writing, which may’t even successfully rip off movies that have been made a whole lot of occasions, places the tough in tough draft, of course. But her cut-corners direction is just as big a calamity. There are stagey scenes of, say, the scrappy crew strolling into a hallway from a room where you may virtually hear Wilson yelling, “Action!”
And the big show at the end, even with its live performance lighting and rainfall impact, is edited in a metronomic manner that places us to sleep instead of perking us up.
Spice up your life? Spice up your film!
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