Pitch Perfect 2: Impossible to live up to the original
Pitch Perfect 2 was a worthwhile, but disappointing sequel.
I know that this site has been generally about basketball and coaching, but I saw Pitch Perfect 2 this weekend and felt it necessary to share my thoughts with the masses.
I loved Pitch Perfect. I fell madly in love with Anna Kendrick and had to immediately put the acapella comedy up at the top of my guilty pleasure movie list (that I apparently only admit to the reading public) with Mean Girls.
On Sunday afternoon when the movie was playing I kept waiting for it to live up the standards of the original. I think that was an unfair expectation, however. I don’t regret seeing it, but I was certainly disappointed leaving the theater.
Pitch Perfect 2 produced a decent amount of laughter, but almost all of it was through cheap jokes. The announcers, John and Gail produced non-stop off-color jokes for easy laughs and throughout the movie each character was exploited for the humor in them being black, gay, hispanic or some other minority. The jokes were funny, but easy and were unfortunately the laugh-out-loud distraction of a rushed plot.
A disproportionate amount of time was spent on Rebel Wilson’s character Fat Amy after a hysterical performance in the first movie. The movie’s whole plot pretty much starts with her pants ripping during a mid-air acrobatic stunt and we spend way more time following her love story with Bumper (which seems to be rushed and forced) rather than the relationship between the supposed main character Becca (Kendrick) and her love interest Jesse.
Integrating a new Bella is an interesting plot twist, but picking actress Hailee Steinfeld was interesting, considering that she looks 12-years-old, way too young for college, while the rest of the cast looks to be way too old for college. Unfortunately, Steinfeld’s character Emily bring with her a song called ‘Flashlight’, which will not even come close to matching the catchiness or post-movie stardom of Kendrick’s Cups from the original.
In trying to recreate the ‘riff-off’ scene from the original, the Bellas show up at some creepy acapella-dungeon for an off-the-top of the dome, acapella improv competition. Not only was the scene a poor recreation of the original riff-off, it was never explained why a group of college girls would be okay going to this creepy guys house and why the other teams (including the Treblemakers) were there.
I don’t regret spending the $9 or so on the movie. But let’s call it what it was: a free-pass for past greatness featuring the Green Bay Packers and Snoop Dogg, rather than a brilliant sequel.
CoachSass.com 