Right before my screening of Pitch Perfect 2, I gave the first film a rewatch. I remembered very little of 2012’s Pitch Perfect aside from a few funny quips from John Michael Higgins, my annoyance with the lip-syncing, and the delightful nature of its lead, Anna Kendrick. Watching it again, there is a lot to like. When the film leans in a more Christopher Guest direction by simultaneously making fun of and embracing the a cappella world, it is quite funny and heartfelt. When it shifts over into Judd Apatow territory, with schticky performers like Rebel Wilson and Adam DeVine just riffing, the whole movie just gets boring.
Unfortunately (for me at least), the surprise audience the original found gravitated towards those schticky bits, which means the sequel is filled with twice as many, if not more, of these moments. Any scene involving Wilson’s Fat Amy cannot progress without her chiming in with some non sequitur every third line. Every “zinger” halts the scene and story. She’s even given a romantic subplot with DeVine’s character that you feel nothing for and isn’t funny in the slightest. It drags down the rest of the film, which is actually pretty good.
The Barden Bellas are now all seniors, performing across the country after taking home their fourth national championship. During a performance at the Kennedy Center, with the President in the audience, Fat Amy’s pants split, exposing her nether region to the nation. This leads the Bellas to be suspended from competition and pulled from their victory tour, which is taking up by the current world champions Das Sound Machine from Germany. The only competition they are allowed to compete in is the world championships, which now Brittany Snow‘s Chloe and the group are laser focused on winning.
Well, Kendrick’s Beca has other things on her mind. She has started up an internship at a record company, headed by Keegan-Michael Key, which she keeps secret from Chloe for fear she cannot handle someone not thinking about the competition 24/7. It’s a bit of forced conflict, but in the moment, it works well enough. The Bellas also welcome in a new Freshman, Emily (Hailee Steinfeld), the daughter of a famed past Bella who also writes her own music.
The plot here is not groundbreaking stuff. Beca, Chloe and Emily are all trying to find their own place. Beca may have a good ear and can mash-up songs together, but if she wants to succeed, she has to find her own voice. Chloe has been failing classes purposefully so she can remain a Bella in her seventh year of college. And Emily needs to learn how to channel her perspective into the world, a natural opposite for Beca’s plight. Though not groundbreaking, it still makes for compelling character relationships and drama.
Steinfeld makes for a welcome addition to the group along with Kendrick and Snow continuing to be charming, funny, and just really likable. The rest of the group I could take or leave. Each girl is given a schtick and aren’t allowed to be expanded. Ester Dean‘s Cynthia is a black lesbian. Hana Mae Lee‘s Lilly says weird things quietly. Chrissie Fit‘s Flo only talks about how crime-ridden Guatemala is. We get no sense of their inner lives, and in a movie about a group bonding, that stuff is kind of important.
I mentioned in my opening I was annoyed by the lip-syncing. That would bother me in nearly every context it is used, but in Pitch Perfect and its sequel, it really drives me up the wall. “Why?” because a capella is all about a group of people on stage making music from scratch with just their mouths. It’s a really hard thing to do, and when done well, it is very impressive. I cannot be terribly impressed with these performances because they aren’t actually performing them. When they start singing and it sounds heavily processed, it takes me completely out of the moment. It may not bother the Top 40 listeners who will flock to this movie, but for someone who really respects a great voice, it’s terribly disappointing.
What I will give the film credit for is it places a lot of stock in performing original material. Yes, it is fine and fun to do covers of popular songs, but if you want to be a true artist, you have to develop material from nothing. I didn’t find the end result of this originality to be all that great (something I chalk that up to not being the biggest pop music fan), but the thought behind what the song represents I respect a lot.
Pitch Perfect 2 is a mixed bag. The character journeys are well executed. Those three central performances are very good. The musical performances are a bit grating. The parade of celebrity cameos (including everyone from David Cross to John Hodgman to members of the Green Bay Packers… in the same scene) feel like a crutch more than funny. Rebel Wilson riffing is never funny. Some of the other jokes land. Some don’t. Elizabeth Banks in her first outing as a director is perfectly serviceable, not doing anything terribly interesting with the camera or blocking but also not anything terrible either. It all falls right in the middle, not unlike its predecessor.
