Sing It On Again: PITCH PERFECT 2

Pitch Perfect 2 has a winning sense of pleasant reunion. The sequel to the surprise hit a capella college comedy from a few years ago carries with it a delight to be back. Surely no one expected that sloppy but likable little comedy to do well enough to support a follow up, but here we are. It returns to the world of the Barton Bellas, an all-female a capella group made up of unlikely misfits last seen winning the national title. Picking up three years later, Becca (Anna Kendrick), Chloe (Brittany Snow), Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), and the rest (Ester Dean, Hana Mae Lee, Alexis Knapp, Chrissie Fit) are on the verge of graduating, but find their final year off to a bad start with an embarrassing performance in which one of their members accidentally moons the Obamas. This gets them kicked out of the world of a capella, setting up another underdog scenario to be overcome by winning the World Championship to get reinstated. Once again, the young women must learn to work together and create a great routine, all the while dealing with their individual eccentricities.

Luckily, screenwriter Kay Cannon isn’t content to repeat the structure of the first movie. In fact, she seems to realize generic let’s-put-on-a-show and campus comedy plotlines were holding the otherwise amiable predecessor back. She knows for an encore the audience just wants to hang out with likable performers doing their shtick in between good music. The result is a movie that’s looser, longer, sillier, with more music and funnier lines. It’s the rare comedy sequel that’s actually an across-the-board improvement instead of a safe repeat of a known formula. The need to win the big championship is a climactic goal, but everything leading up to it is simply excuses for pleasant banter, funny supporting roles, silly gags, cameos, and fun musical numbers, featuring everything from Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus to Sir Mix-a-Lot and Kris Kross.

Making her directorial debut, Elizabeth Banks (who also, with John Michael Higgins, returns as a color commentator) moves the proceedings with a good pace and fine eye for smooth pop filmmaking. It’s episodic, with plenty of digressions including romances (Skylar Astin and Adam DeVine make appearances) and professional concerns (Keegan-Michael Key shows up as a record producer). But it never drags as the bright, bouncy, colorful, and consistently amusing movie zips along on slick competence providing good-natured, high-spirited, undemanding entertainment. We see a series of misadventures, from clashes with the terrifyingly perfect German group Das Sound Machine to a new freshman recruit (Hailee Steinfeld) struggling to fit in, and an underground a capella battle held in a rich fan’s basement (featuring everyone from Reggie Watts to John Hodgman to a few Green Bay Packers).

It could be scattered, but there’s a nice emotional throughline involving female friendships and the group’s importance to its members that gets a heartwarming payoff in their final performance. Along the way, Banks and her cast find funny bits of business in every scene. Whether we’re with Snoop Dogg recording a Christmas album or camping in the woods on a team-building exercise, it’s enjoyable enough to be worth the detour. It’s only a matter of time before Wilson crashes in with a loopy one-liner, Kendrick gets a flustered retort, or one of the supporting players pipes in with a goofy barb. The movie plays to everyone’s strength in that way, before drawing all the voices together in beautiful harmony for ensemble numbers that really sing. They work well together, and as a result it’s fun to be around them no matter where the plot takes them. With a favorable hit-to-miss joke ratio, this is a big crowd-pleasing comedy that’s essentially nice and easy to like.

Sing it On: PITCH PERFECT

Pitch Perfect is a light, inconsequential comedy about college a cappella groups. That’s, as the movie is quick to tells us again and again, when people perform fully orchestrated songs with only their mouths. The movie is basically wall-to-wall music; even the Universal logo’s theme gets a dramatic vocal spin before the movie begins. The whole thing is peppy, bouncy, and scattered. It has a collision of standard plotlines: the let’s-put-on-a-show, the underdog-team-of-misfits and the follow-your-dreams, as well as some standard college comedy and rom com material. And yet, on some level it works. With the sheer likability of the cast and the strength of the melodies, it just about gets by, a little bit nerdy, a little bit sassy, and a little bit dirty.

We follow adorable Anna Kendrick as a too-cool-for-school aspiring D.J. who wants nothing to do with Barden University’s down-on-its-luck all-girls group. But wouldn’t you know it? She joins anyways. The leaders of the group (Anna Camp and Brittany Snow) are unhappy after a disastrous performance at last year’s a cappella finals and don’t think this year’s applicants bode well for their chances this time around. Aside from Kendrick, the girl with talent even she doesn’t quite realize, this is a ragtag group of weirdoes with standard goofy traits, roughly sketched. The one real comedic gem of the bunch is Fat Amy. As she explains, she calls herself that so skinny girls don’t have to say it behind her back. She’s played by Rebel Wilson (you might remember her as Kristen Wiig’s roommate in Bridesmaids), who brings a committed confidence to her very strange character.

As it so happens, the girl group has a heated rivalry with last year’s winners, an all-boy group who, surprise, surprise, attend the same college. That the two best a cappella groups in the country come from the same school is funny, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be a joke. It’s just narratively convenient. The leader of the boys (Adam DeVine) is a real jerk, but there’s a sweet guy among them too. He’s played by Skylar Astin and it’s quickly apparent that he’ll be paired off with Kendrick for the duration of the film, first as endearingly antagonistic competitor, then as buddy, then as…well take a wild guess. Anyways, the two groups march through the qualifying rounds with a routine inevitability. There’s no tension to the competition sequences. (They’re not funny either, despite John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks playing what is essentially Fred Willard’s role from Best in Show.) Of course both teams will make it. We’ve got to keep hearing them sing.

Much like Bring It On, the Kirsten Dunst cheerleading comedy from, sheesh, over a decade ago, did for its chosen extracurricular activity, Pitch Perfect is a movie that makes much out of its easily recognizable, but somewhat insular, world, coining the kinds of phrases that will be surely quoted in school choir rooms and a cappella groups for years to come. (“A-ca-what?” That sort of thing.) The plot of the movie is largely interested in watching the students practice routines, argue about song choices, clash with rivals, grow closer together through singing, and performing. It’s a good thing that these songs are well done. They’re easy to listen to and often brought a smile to my face and a tap to my toes. The actors are all fine singers (and/or were dubbed or auto-tuned to perfection) and bring some fine charisma to their characters’ stage presences.

But let me be clear. This is a sloppily made movie. It is basically a distended sitcom pilot, and not even a particularly good sitcom either. Director Jason Moore and screenwriter Kay Cannon are both making their feature debuts after working for years in television, so it’s somewhat understandable if not entirely excusable. The movie is visually indifferent with a large ensemble that remains mostly background as the leads act out standard plots and relationships that don’t quite pay off. There’s even a little joke late in the game in which two mostly anonymous supporting characters are forced to remind one of the main characters that they’ve “been here the whole time.” The personalities may sell a lot of the zippy jokes, but other times, like in a particularly gross scene involving a big puddle of vomit, the writing feels miscalculated.

A handful of key moments between characters seem to happen unseen between scenes and a large part of the middle of the storyline contains scenes that could probably be shuffled in any order and still work (or not) just as well. I’m sure there are endless alternate takes and deleted scenes on the proverbial cutting room floor with this one. Still, I must say I found myself enjoying it slightly more often than not. And judging from the loud giggling I heard in the theater throughout the entirety of the movie, I’ll bet it’ll find a spot in many slumber party viewing rotations for at least the next few years.