I thought ‘Pitch Perfect’ was generic, little did I know that the sequel, ‘Pitch Perfect 2’ goes past the bottom of the bucket generic and is instead reaping up generic soil and throwing it on the screen, admittedly intersected with some good music sequences, and hoping they can recapture the magic of the first film. Spoilers – They don’t.
‘Pitch Perfect’ while generic was consistently fun throughout the entire film, while watching ‘Pitch Perfect 2’ however, I didn’t even smile once. Every clever or funny joke from the first is driven deep into the ground because for some reason the people behind this film think that if they keep making the same jokes, it will just get funnier, it doesn’t. It becomes tiresome, ridiculously fast.
The problem with almost all sequels is that the studios and creators think that because this is a sequel, it must be bigger and more of a spectacle to draw people in. That never works unless the audience only cared about the spectacle in the first film, of which there was very little in ‘Pitch Perfect’, so I don’t understand why the stakes must be raised when it means that you lose the magic that made the first film such a hit.
The performances are still all great, everyone plays their role fine, nothing award worthy, but sufficient for what the film is. I will say though that the overuse of Gail and John, the commentators, almost ruined them for me, they were used sparingly and brilliantly in the first film, in this film though, they had more screen time than some of the Bella’s, which is ridiculous.
Even the song choices and use of music are nowhere near as good as the first and while most of the acapella song mixes are enjoyable, it just pales in comparison to the first film.
The directors are different but both films look the same, one just has grander locations to work with and that is disappointing. If they were so insistent on doing the ‘World Competitions’ I would have preferred a bit more risk-taking with the direction, maybe flash a bit of influence from British, French and German film-makers instead of very standard, static shots. Don’t get me wrong, it does the job with the film but it could have been so much more.
The film isn’t bad by any means, it is just not fun in the slightest and unfortunately, a third film is in the works. Let’s just hope it lowers the stakes a little and regains some of the fun energy the first film had.
5/10
