Bring it On VS. Pitch Perfect

Has anyone ever noticed how Pitch Perfect is this decade’s Bring it On?

I love both movies but I can’t ignore the extreme similarities. Let’s look further into it and explore!

First, let’s sum up the plots of both movies. Bring it On tells the story of a cheerleading squad on its way to nationals. Pitch Perfect tells the story of an acapella group on its way to nationals.

Right then! Let’s do this.

Bring it On opens with the cheerleaders doing a “self introduction” routine that tells us that Torrance (played by Kirsten Dunst) has been chosen as the new captain and ends with her being topless and publicly humiliated.

Pitch Perfect starts with the Barden Bellas (the acapella group) performing at the national collegiate acapella competition only to have Aubrey (the upcoming leader and played by Anna Camp) throw up mid-performance and humiliate herself publicly.

Both actions are then followed by the opening credits. While I know that the Bring it On scene is actually a dream, it is still very much the basis of Pitch Perfect’s scene.

Both movies then show us that new members need to be added to the teams. Bring it On has an injured cheerleader to replace and Pitch Perfect needs to replace all the graduated students. This brings us of course to the American Idol style of embarrassing auditions montage. At the end of the audition, both movies present us with the added participant. The one that doesn’t really want to be here but does it anyway because of….reasons.

Bring it On shows us Missy (played by Eliza Dushku), the new student who self describes herself as “a hardcore gymnast” and says that “no way jumping up and down is gonna satisfy [her]”. While in Pitch Perfect we see Becca (played by Anna Kendrick) who we saw before and said that she “wants to produce music” and that acapella is “kinda lame”. Both characters tryout for their respective teams even though they think those teams are lame and what they’re trying to do is cooler. Of course, both end up being better than everyone else who auditioned and both are not liked by all members of their teams.

In both movies, we have “the crisis”. In Bring it On the team finds out all their routines are stolen from another cheerleading squad and so has to make a brand new routine for regionals. They use a choreographer who ends up giving them a routine he has sold to six other squads and they are humiliated in regionals. However, being the defending champions, they get an automatic pass to nationals in order to defend their title.

Pitch Perfect performs the same routine over and over again and in regionals, Becca tries to change it mid-performance. The team loses but gets to advance to nationals anyway because one of the winning teams gets disqualified.

After both teams suffer such humiliating defeat, they decide to change everything and perform and epic, different and exciting routine at their respective national competition.

In both movies, we also have a love interest who ends up influencing the final routines musically.

Finally, both movies have their own special vocabulary. Bring it On uses words such as “cheeraucracy” “cheer-sex” and “cheer-tator”. Pitch Perfect uses words such as “aca-awesome” “aca-scuse me” “aca-believe it” etc.

Both movies showcase a specific world with its own rules and culture and both are great fun to watch. But with Pitch Perfect 2 coming out, I couldn’t help but point out the similarities. Pitch Perfect is the new Bring it On.