Pitch Perfect 2
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Skylar Astin, Rebel Wilson,
Brittany Snow, Ester Dean, Hana Mae Lee, Alexis Knapp,
Hailee Steinfeld, Chrissie Fit
Director: Elizabeth Banks
Confession: I only just watched the original Pitch Perfect yesterday.
I know, it’s like I broke the law or something. But hey, I watched a lot of Glee in college, so — maybe a little
arrogantly — I felt prepared enough to dive right into the first movie and watch a diverse assortment of
young adults sing and dance their hearts out before making it to Regionals or whatever. While certainly not
a wholesale ripoff, fans of the original know that that’s pretty much what happens. Anna Kendrick, as the
drily rebellious Beca, joins a motley crew of disgraced college a capella singers and eventually leads them
to glory. It ain’t perfect, but it’s fun — the kind of teen movie that wears its love of Top 40 pop and ‘80s
underdog fantasies on its sleeve.
Well, if Pitch Perfect was Glee at the movies, then you can liken Pitch Perfect 2 to Glee’s second season. It’s
bigger, it’s louder, it’s stuffed to the brim with guest stars, and it’s really not as much fun. Pitch Perfect 2 is a
lesson in why too much of a good thing can be bad.
Pitch Perfect 2 picks up three years after the first movie. The Barden Bellas, at the top of their game as
Barden University’s premier all-girl a capella group, is giving a special performance for Barack and Michelle
Obama at Lincoln Center. Let’s just say a mishap occurs that effectively destroys the Bellas’ reputation, and
once again the group is put on the road to redemption. It’s familiar territory; how will these misfits win it all
when the deck is stacked against them? Obviously by winning an international a capella competition that
no American has ever won before, that’s how! We’ve got the glee club equivalent of Rocky IV here!
Of course, we all know that they will in the end, but the actual getting there is formula by now. It’s the
defeat-defeat-harmony-victory cycle. But this time, with Elizabeth Banks in the director's chair, it's clear
there's more money to play around with. Where once the Bellas faced off against fellow college nerds, now
they grapple with singing German shock troops and the actual Green Bay Packers.
Raising the stakes by raising the production values is a problem that beset Glee early on, too. No expense
has been spared, from wardrobe to talent to the numerous set pieces, but it only serves to dress up the fact
that, plot-wise, we’ve been there and done that. Some performances literally only happen because the
movie needs a flashier way to have people sing at each other. At one point, the Bellas wind up at a secret,
underground singing competition because David Cross, as a rich, eccentric a capella fan, loves inviting
groups to his performance dungeon. It’s a bizarre bit of fan service for those who loved the Riff-Off in the
original, but the whole conceit breaks down the more Banks throws at it. If you step even a toe outside of
the film’s bubble of absurdity, you’ll find yourself asking: What am I really getting out of Packers linebacker
Clay Matthews singing "Bootylicious"? Why is he in this movie?
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