Preface

• Alright guys, so in all honesty I saw the first Pitch Perfect for the first time literally last week.
• I enjoyed it, didn’t think it was great, but liked it enough to really want to see the second one.
• So here we are!

Premise

• So Pitch Perfect 2 is the sequel to Pitch Perfect, and in it we have the team from the original Pitch Perfect back in action doing their a cappella thing but (much like the first one) something happens where they’re shunned from the a cappella community and they need to get their mojo back!
• In addition to this it deals with romances, jobs, and everything else going on with the characters.
• So how is it? Well, it’s okay. I guess?

Cast

• No Cast “and Characters” because I apologize but I know very few of the character names in this movie!
• I know Anna Kendrick is Beca and she’s cool.  I felt like she was a bit too cold and kinda un-relatable in the first one, but apparently Elizabeth Banks (new director) told her to lose that for this one.  And I liked that, I like her character for the most part and the new attitude made her even better.
  • My problem with the whole movie is that they didn’t really focus on her enough.
• My main issue is that they introduce a TON of new characters including this one who’s kinda good at a cappella, but ultimately does her own thing.  She was annoying throughout the course of the movie and felt shoe-horned into the movie.  Maybe she was the little sister of a star from the first movie or something?
• And there was this other Hispanic girl who kept being annoying in her humor style.  THAT I got sick of fairly quickly…
• But going back to positives I enjoyed a lot of the old characters from the first movie like Fat Amy, Chloe, and especially Beca’s love interest Jesse (I believe?).  I really liked Jesse in the first movie and I liked him even more here.
  • He’s super into movies, how could I not!
• That jerk guy from the first movie though, the villain that looked like he was kicked out of Boy Scouts, he was REALLY annoying though.  The first movie his humor didn’t work for me, but at least I understood he just wanted to take down the Bellas.
  • In this one, he was there for no reason.  They try to set him up with Fat Amy, but that felt out of place, and you could have had her do a relationship with any other guy on the campus.
  • Bringing back Jerk-Scout felt really odd since they seemingly wrote his character off at the end of the first, so why bring him back for the second?
  • Ultimately, if he wasn’t in the movie the movie would’ve been a bit better.

Writing

• Okay, in terms of writing I didn’t feel like this one had the same wit and snappiness as the first one.
• I felt like there were definitely a lot of “sequel-ish” things going on which was good, and broadened the scope of the story but it felt like it could stand on its own and didn’t seem to have any ties to the first one.
• And the distribution of scenes was a little off.  Beca has a job for instance and I would have loved to have seen more at the job, but they did a couple different sequences including one with like a pre-game that just felt like they weren’t necessary.
• Overall, I think each character had a lot of funny lines though and the writers did a very solid job at getting the laughs in.  I laughed out loud at least a few times.

Direction

• Some people have been giving Elizabeth Banks a hard time for this being her directorial debut, but I thought she did well.
• I think she knew where each character was and worked from there.
• The HUGE issue I had with the first Pitch Perfect was its timing, in that everything felt rushed.  One scene it was her first day, a second later the scene changes and she’s been at college for two months.
• The pacing was right on in this movie and each character got their shot as I said before, even if not every character was the most likable.
• I thought the a cappella was really well done too, much like the first one though not as good as the first one.
• This was a heavy project for a directorial debut but I think Elizabeth Banks did well.

In Conclusion

• In Conclusion, I don’t know that I liked Pitch Perfect 2 more than Pitch Perfect but I did have a really fun time with it.
• Some of the characters weren’t too likable, but each of them did have a chance to grow on you and was used well.
• Additionally, some of the writing got a bit jumbled but the music was good and I recognize this movie isn’t trying to be the next great classic.
• Ultimately, if you’re a fan of the first one then you’ll love this one too.  If you kinda liked the first one then you’ll probably enjoy this too, have a fun time but it’s about the same.  And if you hated the first one, well what are you doing here?
• But it’s a positive movie overall, can’t say it isn’t.

3/5

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So guys, those are my thoughts on Pitch Perfect 2! What are your thoughts on this movie and did you like it better than the first one?  Let me know in the comments down below, and as always, thanks for reading guys.