Pitch Perfect 2

Get it, it sounds like bitches.

"We're Back, Pitches."

Hello remaining friends, welcome back to more thrills and spills on Double Dare. I mean The Tagline; I don't sometimes think I'm Mark Summers in 1992, that would be insane. Anyway this is not that, this is a movie blog where I talk about movies I watched, and explain why they weren't as good as Mad Max: Fury Road. No no I'm just kidding, sometimes I talk about other things, man I'm having a really bad day for separating reality and my bizarre fantasy life. Today I'm going to talk about Pitch Perfect 2, sequel to the unexpectedly really good Pitch Perfect, a movie that had a premise I didn't feel like I had even a remote interest in. I was wrong about that, and apparently if Anna Kendrick is involved I care about A Capella at least a little bit. In Pitch Perfect 2, the Barden Bellas are doing their victory lap after their triumph at nationals three years running. Unfortunately, a mishap involving Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), her vagina, and president Obama, results in the group being nationally disgraced and barred from competing. This does not stop them from being able to compete at the world A Capella competition (which is a real thing I had to look it up). The Bellas are not allowed to recruit any new members, but do anyway in the form of Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) whose mother was in the group way back when. The situation is complicated however because Beca (Anna Kendrick) has other things on her mind, such as working for an asshole music producer.

This also happened.

That's an important thing we're ALL interested in though! It would be wrong to deny her that kind of a golden opportunity. Considerable internal strife makes a Bella victory seem unlikely, and this situation is FURTHER exacerbated by Das Sound Machine, a spooky German group that has taken the Bella's throne during their suspension, and also does tons of complex choreography. They are led by a terrifying and beautiful lady who the movie only ever identifies as Kommisar (who is portrayed by Danish actress Birgitte Hjort Sorensen, who recently appeared on Game of Thrones, and then got killed by zombie children), that Beca has sexually confused feelings about. Before the Bellas can beat their external enemies though, they have to overcome blablabla you get it you've heard this before.

Better than sleeping head to foot I guess?

This is sort of the thing with movies in this particular genre though, it's tough to do anything that REALLY feels original. The first Pitch Perfect had a sort of unusual subject matter, but in the end this plot formula is all too familiar. Sometimes that's okay though. Like I've said many times before, a movie that does something that's been done before might not be great, but if it's executed well it can still be pretty good. Pitch Perfect 2 doesn't really break any stunning new ground (as a comedy or as a sequel) but it is still entertaining, cleverly written, and features well coordinated and performed musical segments. Also a sequence involving some Pat Benatar and a canoe, so I guess that was sort of novel actually. The film also used its sequel capital wisely, and invested in Snoop Dogg and Keegan-Michael Key (you know from Key and Peele) as Beca's music producer boss who is funny like you would expect.

She's about to make a fart noise!

My personal favorite detail of the movie I think was an underground a Capella competition that involved a variety of teams, one of which was just actually a bunch of the Green Bay Packers. Apparently at least some of them are singers, I don't know if that's a draft consideration or if it just worked out that way, but maybe they keep a serviceable A Capella group on the line up just in case it could help them win the Superbowl or something. Elizabeth Banks directed and produced this film, and also has a role as a podcast commentator on A Capella competitions alongside John Michael Higgins (who was Varrick on Legend of Korra? who knew!) and that's a pretty funny running commentary for a number of scenes in the film. Overall like many procedurally generated sequels, it isn't as surprising and exceptional an experience as the first, but it's still entertaining and worth watching. I have serious doubts however that this movie demands ANOTHER sequel, but god damn they're going to do it anyway. After all this movie is now the highest grossing musical comedy (cresting 278 million and putting School of Rock where it belongs, not in 1st place for anything). Admittedly that's a pretty narrow genre but I mean, still that's a lot of dollars.

That's about it for now! Join me next week for Terminator: Actually Not the Worst Movie Ever.