Pitch Perfect 2 Review
PG13: Language and Innuendos
Universal Pictures
1 hr and 55 Minutes
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow, Rebel Wilson, Ester Dean, Skylar Astin, Elizabeth Banks, Alexis Knapp, John Micheal Higgins, David Cross, Flula Borg, Ben Platt, Hailee Steinfeld, Birgitte Hjort Sorensen, Keegan Micheal Key, Hana Mae Lee, Chrissie Fit, with Adam Devine, and Anna Camp
Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during my adolescence. Outdated language might be seen in these old posts. Since then, my thoughts and values have grown. This review is being presented as they were originally written, grammatical errors, shitty sentence structure, and typos galore. Because to do otherwise would be that same as claiming these flaws never existed.
BACKSTORY: N/A
STORYLINE: After a humiliating command performance at Lincoln Center, the Barden Bellas enter an international competition that no American group has ever won in order to regain their status and right to perform.
REVIEW: In 2012 when I saw Pitch Perfect with my dad it was a pleasant surprise of how well crafted and inventive it was. While I feared it would've been like a long PG13 episode of Glee with a run of the mill story the movie proved me wrong by having fun tune renditions and hard hitting gags from beginning to end. Now with the sequel you always fear that it won't hit the high note its predecessor did. Sorry to say, all of tour fears are true. Pitch Perfect 2 is sadly everything you expected the 1st was going to be. The movie does have a clever setup, but the plot just derails itself to four different subplots. Granted several are funny, there are some that's really cliched while dragging the movie on. There are at least three training montages is really filler to the next musical number. Though director Elizabeth Banks does a great job capturing the feel the first film had, she didn't capture the charm. The movie is more mean spirited with inclusions of new characters who are nothing but stereotypes, characters who had dimension in the first just being downgraded to be stereotypes. Like Lily who had her funny character arc where she always whispered messed up things until towards the end when she clearly spoke loud until the end. Here they just fucking drop it and have her whisper funny things again. Then you also got characters from the first who just make fucking cruel jokes specifically being Banks and Higgins whose roles as commentators you question onto why they're still maintaining their job. That being said there is a go sixty percent of jokes that work and some gags hit hard though there are very flat and awkward moments due to cheap one liners. The acapella music here is done so much better than the first that the film make fun of itself on how absurd the idea of acapella is. You can tell that the song arrangements were thought and planned into before a script was even made. It's like the furious movies where they think of stunts before writing a script around them. The choreography is put together okay too for whenever there is dancing without a joke being an outcome.
LAST STATEMENT: As fantastically the music is put together and heavy hitting jokes the film offers, Pitch Perfect 2 is a messy mean spirited sequel that hits more flat notes than high notes.
Rating: 2.5/5 | 51%
Super Scene: "We Belong Together"
