Film Review: Pitch Perfect 2
ACCA LACKING
Pitch Perfect 2 features an almost entirely female ensemble cast, is directed by a woman (Elizabeth Banks), is aimed at a largely female audience and features a strong theme of “Girl Power!”, yet the most feminist film released in America on May 15, 2015 was without a doubt Mad Max: Fury Road. There are countless reasons for this, but it sums up quite simply the essential problem with Pitch Perfect 2: it doesn’t win at anything. “Haters gonna hate!” cry the filmmakers and the mindlessly obsessive teen fans, but it’s unfortunate that this film is no more special than the typically mediocre comedy-sequel-by-committee formula allows. The funniest jokes from the first film are repeated and made bigger, louder and apparently better in pathetic attempts to keep a grip on the audience’s attention, while Banks is faced with the unenviable chance of filling two hours on screentime in what is an empty project. Were it pared down to its important components, Pitch Perfect 2 (or, for that matter, its predecessor) would have turned out about 25 minutes in length.
What is put on screen in that other 85 minutes varies, but is generally quite stale. Rebel Wilson and Adam Devine, two of the most unlikeable “comedians” currently working, are paired together once more for scenes of excruciating unfunniness, with humour generally based around the assumption that being overweight is funny. The “beloved” a cappella mash-ups are overlong and badly mixed and choreographed, and the film’s one original song is almost laughably unmemorable (though preferable by far to the first film’s nails-on-blackboard “Cups Song”). Default lead Anna Kendrick is given a token solo storyline, involving some mildly amusing scenes of Keegan Michael Key shouting and Snoop Dogg singing Christmas carols, but former Oscar nominee Kendrick looks constantly embarrassed to be part of the project. Much of the heavy lifting in terms of charm and wit rests on the shoulders of Hailee Steinfeld and David Cross, who are given shamefully little to do, and Banks herself, who’s sequences with John Michael Higgins as two acca-podcasters are the film’s comedy highlight.
There’s little to be merry at in Pitch Perfect 2, a film which reopens the horrific ethnic stereotypes broken down by the infinitely superior Glee over six seasons without any of the first Pitch Perfect’s uniqueness to save it.
