by Brendan Foley
I can still remember being in the theater when the trailer for the original Pitch Perfect came on. The audience around my friends and I greeted all two minutes and thirty seconds of that trailer with a chorus of groans, and little wonder. It looked sort of like Glee: The Movie or a college version of High School Musical, which I guess would just be called College Musical, which does not have the same ring.
But Pitch Perfect turned out to be a genuine little gem, heartfelt and hilarious and buoyed by a great ensemble of wildly talented women who were equally adept at rattling off screwball one-liners as they were at belting big numbers. Director Jason Moore and screenwriter Kay Cannon cleverly appropriated the traditional underdog sports movie structure, grafting it with protagonist Becca (Anna Kendrick, coming into full bloom as a movie star) learning to embrace openness and friendship. The music and performances popped, and if the film occasionally strayed too far into the out-and-out cartoonish (or gross-out, in the case of one recurring vomit gag) that was alright because the whole enterprise was just so gosh-darn cheery.
So now we come to the sequel, Pitch Perfect 2, available on DVD and Blu-ray on September 22, and if Pitch Perfect was a band camp riff on Bad News Bears, this is their Rocky IV. Working with Cannon, new director Elizabeth Banks has fashioned a live action musical cartoon, cheerfully embracing the ridiculous and outsized aspects of the first film and exaggerating them to the point where the movie barely even pretends to be connected to the real world. It’s an approach that mostly works, and thanks to a once again note-perfect ensemble and irresistibly catchy musical numbers, Pitch Perfect 2 manages to be the rare comedy sequel that lives up to its original.
Picking up three years after the first film, the loveable misfits of the Barden Bellas a cappella team have continued to dominate the competitive college a cappella league, even scoring a performance in front of Barack and Michelle Obama. The performance goes very, very wrong and the Bellas wind up disgraced and suspended from all competition, effectively destroying the team. Seizing on a loophole, the Bellas wager that if they can win the World A Cappella competition, they can be reinstated.
What’s most interesting about that plot is that the film has no real interest in it. Whereas the first film had a series of competitions leading up to the final performance, with built-in stakes for each successive performance, in Pitch Perfect 2 the characters mostly just hang out and kill time before the eventual World competition. There are minor conflicts and character arcs, but Banks seems less interested in fostering character drama than in stuffing the movie full of gags on top of gags with more gags on the side and gag-dressing and gag-sauce and here are some more gags sprinkled on top would you like some gag-mints while you wait for your bill.
To that end, we get David Cross doing a fey Southern accent as a millionaire who runs an underground a cappella fight club, we get Keegan Michael-Key as a rage-fueled record producer, Snoop Dogg singing Christmas carols, tons of cameos from various cult comedy figures, and even more time with John Michael Higgins and Banks herself as viciously catty a cappella announcers.
And that’s without mentioning Das Sound Machine, the lunatic German super-group that antagonize the Bellas this time around, or the swollen ranks of returning and new characters, many of whom get their own individual romances and storylines.
It would be easy for a movie like this to become bogged down and inert, but Banks mostly pulls it off. While this is her first time directing a feature film, Banks has a strong eye for how to shoot and cut both comedy and music, and she is clearly having more fun with the staging than Moore did on the first film (the fact that the musical numbers are now much more complex even becomes a key plot point). Aside from one weird tic where she keeps repeating the same super-fast overhead zoom during the final concert, Banks seems very comfortable behind the camera.
It helps that the cast assembled for these movies is so stupid-stuffed with talent that Banks can cut to pretty much anyone and score points. Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy and Adam DeVine as Bumper carry their own romance subplot this time out, and both actors display a vulnerability that’s in sharp contrast to the hyper-confident blowhards they normally embody. They even get a full-fledged MUSICAL number together, with zero indication as to where the backing track for Amy’s musical serenade is coming from.
The shift in tone especially benefits Kendrick, who continues to prove in movie after movie that she’s got big Broadway pipes matched to a movie star’s ability to communicate volumes with the smallest expression. Kendrick was excellent in the first film, while unfortunately spending too much of the running time as the wet blanket loner. This time out, Becca’s able to be a part of the fun, and Kendrick’s note-perfect timing gets some of the biggest laughs in the entire movie (my favorite runner being her repeated failed attempts to insult the lead singer of Das Sound Machine).
As much as I enjoyed Pitch Perfect 2, I did find myself missing some of the first film’s quieter, more sincere moments. Not that the sequel is overly glib or anything, it’s just so stuffed with wacky that when it does try for an honest moment of quiet reflection, it falls short. Where the first film was about allowing yourself to be open to the friendships and change that college can offer, the second one is about the fear of leaving college and having to contend with the unknowable and uncontrollable ‘real world’. It’s a great central spine to a film, but Banks and Cannon never quite crack how to tie it into the overarching narrative as successfully as the first film does.
Whereas the final performance in the first film was ridiculously satisfying because of how it paid off each individual characters’ skills and emotional journey, the final setpiece for this film doesn’t really tie into any of the other stories in any meaningful way, mostly because those stories have all been resolved amicably ten minutes before the Bellas take the stage for the last time.
That’s the other weird thing about this movie: there’s no actual conflict. When there are arguments or resentments bubbling over, the interpersonal drama gets resolved very quickly and easily. With the exception of the Das Sound Machine rivalry, every issue is resolved by the characters sitting down and talking through their feelings.
I’m not complaining about this, mind you, I’m just fascinated by it. I’m sure a male writer/director would have insisted on big dramatic blow-ups and equally big, equally dramatic noble gestures to get everyone back on the same team. But Cannon as screenwriter and Banks as director understand that there’s an unwavering baseline of affection between the Bellas at all times, even when they fight or disagree with each other. These girls love and support one another, and the filmmakers don’t feel the need to construct artificial breaks in those bonds to keep the audience engaged.
While it can’t match the surprise factor of the first film, and while the ensemble has gotten to an unwieldly size, Pitch Perfect 2 still manages to capture the flavor and energy of its predecessor and fans should be very pleased to have the films side-by-side on the shelf. I have no idea how Banks or anyone involved hopes to top this film’s various excesses for the upcoming Part 3, but I’ll be happy to watch this cast give it a shot.