Let's Go Out To The Movies: "Pitch Perfect 2" (PG-13 - Universal - 1 hr, 55 mins)

Directed by Elizabeth Banks
Written by Kay Cannon and
Mickey Rapkin

Alo Party Peoples.

I am about as far from the target audience for the Pitch Perfect movies as you can get. It's a series aimed alternatively at female college-age Millenials and overworked parents on family movie night, I'm a young man on the border between the Millenials and... whatever we decide to call the generation after. My personal taste tends to run pretty far from modern family films and from the tastes of other people my age. Oh, and I cannot stand accapella, I just can't. If I wanted to listen to "Wrecking Ball" for some ungodly reason, I'd listen to "Wrecking Ball", not a bunch of people making a rough approximation with their mouths.

So I was not going into this movie expecting anything good. It's a comedy sequel that isn't being helmed by the Lord/Miller duo, why would I expect anything but an unfunny muddled mess? And Pitch Perfect 2 starts off like it's going to fall into the all too common comedy sequel trap of just expanding the scope of the first installment without having anything new to add to the premise. Which in this case is the trials and tribulations of the Barton Bellas, a women's acapella group at a university. But then, somehow, it slowly becomes something with it's own distinct character that comes off as legitimately funny, and almost becomes worth a matinee, before sadly overstaying it's welcome.

Pitch Perfect 2 picks up with the Barton Bellas completely blowing their success from the previous installment and getting suspended from their nationwide tour, but they find a loophole in the paperwork allowing them to get back in if they win at the global level. To do that, they have to defeat the touring act that's replaced them, a big-shot artsy, sorta-edgy German group named Das Sound Machine.

It's basically the first Pitch Perfect, but with more stuff in it. More antics from Rebel Wilson's breakout character Fat Amy, which alternate between landing with a chuckle or a collapsed thud, more understated antics from Hana Mae Lee as Lily the mostly silent oddball of the group, more acapella pop songs, ranging from a tear inducing rendition of "Uprising" from Das Sound Machine to "Cups (When I'm Gone)" a pretty good original song performed by the Bellas.

Then things start to get interesting when the Bellas head out to a secluded forest retreat to "re-harmonize" themselves and "rediscover their sound" in preperation for the big contest. The characters are really able to shine, director Elizabeth Banks infuses some real visual energy into what would otherwise be a series of lightly edited improv routines, the whole thing starts to feel like it could be a really solid family comedy.

But then it gets to the big championship concert and sort of falls apart. Even if acapella isn't your thing, and it isn't mine, the characters had been so solid so far that you could ignore that, helped by the fact that none of the songs have anything to do structurally or thematically with the plot. But the finale is all acapella all the time, and it goes on, and on, and on... The whole thing just sort of goes on about half an hour too long for its own good.

I don't know that Pitch Perfect needed to be a franchise, but it's second installment is a mostly solid distraction, and with some fine tuning I suspect the series could become something truly worthwhile.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B