“Pitch Perfect”? Anna is the damaged by her parents divorce Beca, a loner till her father forces who to participate in something, anything, in college and Beca chooses the a cappella group the Barden Bella . That was then, a cleanly delineated story of redemption after divorce and girl power through power and friendship. The story structure was very strong, it moved inexorably to its conclusion, each piece clicking into the next, till an entirely satisfying end.
The sequel is more of the same only less. It isn’t bad. The ten girls who make up the Barden Bella’s are all back along with new recruit Hailee Steinfeld (a good actress) and starring Anna Kendrick of the unblinking withering stare and “Fat Amy, Rebel Wilson, who the movie biz owes it to themselves to find a way to make her a superstar. She sure brings sexy back.
But the story isn’t very well put together. It is, indeed, uniformly ridiculous, with Rebel tearing her pants at a competition and flashing POTUS and having to win the championship of World A Capella singing or to be dissolved forever. So there isn’t much to do but wait for the competition which (and I don’t think I’m giving anything away) they win.
While the movie has its sweet moments, they seem to be haphazard, a subplot about Anna interning at a recording studio, goes spectacularly nowhere at all, there is little smaller moments, there isn’t really much bonding that works, and while I laughed from time to time, it wasn’t really funny.The Barden Bella’s enemies are a German a capella master race Das Sound Machine: not really a fair fight right? When was the last time the Germans won a war?
The pitch is never really great and its total lack of believability means that the pleasures of the first movie, of real life, it felt real and possible, are blown to smithereens. I’d have had everybody grow up a year and let new recruits in and see what helps in the second year.
Grade: C+