Pitch Perfect 2: Sequel Doesn't Quite Carry The High Note

Director: Elizabeth Banks
Genre: Musical Comedy
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Elizabeth Banks, Brittany Snow, Hailee Steinfeld, Skylar Astin, Adam Devine
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: May 15, 2015
My Rating: 5/10

Yes, the pitch is back. This time, however, it fails to match the tune of its progenitor. In this follow-up to 2012's hit musical comedy, Beca (Kendrick) returns, this time as a senior and de-facto leader of Barden University's all-female a-cappella group, the Barden Bellas. The film opens with President Obama's birthday party he Kennedy Center, where the Bellas deliver a cringe-worthy performance that culminates in Fat Amy (Wilson) hanging upside-down and accidentally ripping her sheer outfit to reveal her genitals. In an attempt to recover from this embarrassing scandal shamelessly dubbed 'muffgate,' the Bellas and regain their reputation as a well-respected, three-time national-championshiop-winning a-cappella troupe, the Bellas take on a great risk by preparing for the World instrumental-less singing competition in Denmark, which no American team has ever won.

Many of the raunchy jokes, unexpected one-liners, and occasional slapstick situations and hi-jinks from the original film return in this one, (with a slightly more R-rated tendency if you ask me) as do the corny a-cappella-related puns. Nevertheless, many appear to simply be recycled, at the expense of a less substantial plot. Kendrick proves to be even more awkward than the confused freshmen we see in the first film, especially around her boss (Keegan-Michael Key) at her new internship at a record label, which slowly begins drawing Beca further away from her commitment to the Bellas. Perhaps this was mean to be a quintessential trait for this character, but Kendrick's constant alternation between delivering her lines with too little and too much emotion eventually becomes frustrating. Even Lily, the ridiculously soft-spoken, eccentric Asian girl does not utter the same creepy one-liners and strange facts about herself with the same tone.

The scenes in which the Bellas exchange witty insults and retorts with other rival a-cappella groups, most notably German powerhouse Das Sound Machine, make you want to roll your eyes and face-palm. If anything, the German stereotypes as embodied by Das Sound Machine's leaders (tall, strong, light-skinned stern and arrogant wax-like figures with noticeable German accents and a disdain for anything American) seem almost too caricatured. And an unsuspecting and very non-masculine cameo by the Green Bay Packers will surely make millions of people cackle, while also probably causing their most ardent supporters to do everything to disassociate themselves from that team name.   I had hopes for Steinfeld's character, an awkwardly enthusiastic freshmen named Emily who becomes the Bella's newest recruit and is nicknamed 'legacy' due to her mother's long tenure as a Bella. However, even she is not given as many lines, and the few comical ones she is granted, she appears to awkwardly rattle off at break-neck speed. Besides, the side-plot involving the Treblemaker's nerdy magician Benji's relentless attempts to display how much he is pining for Emily's love is ridiculous. Much more screen time should have been devoted instead to the relationship between Beca and Jesse (Astin), now the leader of the Trebles who played such an integral role in making Beca realize her mistakes in the first film. Brittany Snow's Chloe, who returns as the third-year super-senior incapable of relinquishing her control over the Bellas, proves even more ditzy and frustratingly shallow this time around, and you can't help but just feel sorry for her.

Even Wilson's character, the filter-less, raunchy, and supremely-proud-of-her-physique Fat Amy's trademark deadpan and uninhibited preparedness to state the obvious before anyone else, does not bring back the same level of hilarity that made fans bend over laughing in the first film. A side-plot involving her on-and-off sexual tension with former Trebles frontman Bumper (Devine) is also a bit disturbing. Of the returning characters, only Elizabeth Banks, who also directs, and John Michael Higgins provide entertainment with their mildly tense exchanges as the a-cappella announcers, John Smith and Gale Abernathy. Banks again finds a way to stay quirky, all while degrading Higgins' character with her witty remarks calling out the absurdly inaccurate, and occasionally sexist, statements that he makes in his own. The only new character that personally made me chuckle a few times is Flo, a Guatemalan exchange student with a Hispanic accent thankfully less hyperbolized than Sofia Vergara's on Modern Family, who is constantly harping on the rudimentary lifestyle in her home country and evincing the probability of her imminent deportation should she do anything remotely wrong.

The soundtrack certainly is better than that of the first film, although the humor appears vigorless and without panache. Clearly, screenwriter Kay Cannon appears to have struggled to find more original jokes for this sequel, and the few moments that do lead you to laugh or even crack a smile are quickly followed by morbidly awkward scenes. Towards the end of the film, once the Bellas finally arrive in Denmark for the International Competition, Beca incorrectly references the celebrated Danish writer of children's fairy tales as "Hayden Christian Andersen," to which Fat Amy responds by citing his lackluster performance in the Star Wars film franchise. That's when you become one step closer to giving up on this film. If you need any more confirmation about how incredibly random and head-shake-inducing this follow-up is, just imagine a Snoop Dogg cameo that involves him rapping classic Christmas tunes in a recording studio. Yeah, it's that absurd. As if the trope of introducing a well-known artist record his own version of an album with classically infantile songs hadn't been used in every other music-related comedy in recent years, this one just chose a rapper who doesn't even have the same star power as he used to have just a few years ago. (And who, due to his Rastafarian conversion, is now known as "Snoop Lion" and is more known for this than for his actual music) The Bella's final performance includes Beyonce's contemporary R&B jam "Run the World (Girls)," and although female power is evident in this performance, it is not in the film as a whole, at least not judging by the glib jumble of lines assembled as part of this insipid script. Aca-astalavista, this singing comedy franchise is over.

Life Itself: It Truly Is Beauty to Behold

Director: Steven James
Genre: Documentary
Starring: Roger Ebert, Chaz Ebert, Marlene Siskel, Errol Morris, Martin Scorsese, Ava DuVernay
Distributed by: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: July 4, 2014
My Rating: 9/10

Any major cinephile should know who Roger Ebert was, or at least have heard the name. This documentary, directed by Steven James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) and based on the eponymous memoir written by Ebert, presents an elaborate, in-depth view of the life and career of one of the most renown American film critics of the twentieth century.

The film traces Ebert's humble beginnings growing up as the son of a bookkeeper and electrician in Urbana, Illinois, where he served as a sports writer for the local town paper as a high-schooler at the age of 15. The film then explains how his work as a writer and editor for the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign led him to enroll in a yearlong master's in English/fellowship program at the University in Cape Town. This, in turn, helped Ebert become a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago and after writing several freelance pieces for the Chicago Daily News, was referred by the paper's editor to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, where Ebert was hired as a full-time film critic in 1967 after about a year of working as a feature writer.

The documentary then focuses on the wide range of film genres that Ebert reviewed along with Chicago Tribune film critic Gene Siskel, his relationship with his wife Chaz, the debilitating thyroid cancer diagnosed in 2002 and subsequent fractured hip that led to his death in April 2013, and his active participation in digital promotion through the creation of his blog, personal website, and Twitter profile as outlets to continue publishing his reviews.

The film begins like many other documentaries: with a few simple facts churned out, with no major emotional attachment, about the subject's upbringing, a collection of old photographs and raw footage of Ebert's start. The pictures show a young man (with a round, pudgy face that appears to be an almost exact, fresher replica of his face as an older man) enthusiastically entering the realm of journalism and churning through different topics before settling on his ultimate passion for moving pictures.

However, the biography soon evolves into much more than a simple linear narrative centered on Ebert's career as a film reviewer. Through the eyes of those who knew him best, primarily his wife Chaz, his friend and colleague Gene Siskel's wife Marlene, and great contemporary filmmakers like Martin Scorsese (who serves as executive producer of the documentary) and Errol Morris with whom Ebert also became close, surfaces an intricate analysis of the critic's outlook on life's subjectiveness as portrayed through cinema. Steve James, along with many of these commentators, (especially Chaz) paints a portrait of a man who seemed capable of finding humor even in the most morose and tense situations.

The raw footage of Ebert's heated arguments with Gene Siskel (on their many syndicated film review TV shows) over both the approach and perspective on certain films seem to initially depict these arguments as amusing, then increasingly destructive and even pathetic. One could almost compare the two celebrated critics to a pair of petulant children in a playground quarreling over a playing ball. Siskel's narrow-mindedness, pedantry and ego appeared to have collided head-on time and again with Ebert's open-mindedness. Ebert himself was also not without certain faults, however, as his occasional scathing remarks demonstrated. At one point while preparing a promo for 3 different films, Ebert's filter evaporates as he caustically jokes: "For Gene, speech seems to be a second language." The brief uncomfortable silence that follows as Siskel struggles to formulate a retort comes as no surprise. Ebert clearly also had a bit of an inflated ego, as demonstrated by his belief that winning a Pulitzer Prize qualified him to write high-caliber reviews about anything.

Likewise, Ebert's unabashed joke as a panelist at a film convention that "The main reason I used to come to these things was in the hopes that I would get laid" may have drawn hearty laughs from many attendees, although I'm sure a comment like this equally elicited cringes from many members of the film industry who received this as a rather creepy remark from a not-so-young outsider.

In the end, of course, it is not until Siskel dies in 1999 that Ebert seemed to have really praised his former fellow critic. Per usual, the aphorism "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" has never rung more true. Whether Ebert's change in his description of Siskel post-death appears hypocritical is up for the audience to decide.

What is perhaps greatest about this film is its emphasis on Ebert's unbridled optimism, resilience and sense of humor despite the cancer that left him looking like an emaciated zombie with a horrifyingly protruding jaw and a broken hipbone. Yes, one could easily compare his case to that of Stephen Hawking because of this. Nevertheless, what makes Ebert's story different is his anthology of work and expertise in a creative field that appealed to human emotions, unlike physical laws of nature such as quantum mechanics. (Not to demean Hawking's groundbreaking work, of course, just simply stating the inherent difference between art and science)

Chaz Ebert provides a very authentic image of her late husband as a man who found catharsis not simply in films but in the everyday moments. Likewise, Marlene Siskel's account of Ebert and her own late husband's tug-of-war relationship, though second-hand, shows how much the two critics truly learned from each other, and how genuinely Ebert respected Gene Siskel despite their diverging viewpoints and how sorely Ebert missed him after his death due to a brain tumor.

Reviewing a documentary is always difficult, partly because documentary films generally present facts and footage that are indisputable and not understated, glorified, or overdramatized by unrealistic plot additions, distortions, or one-dimensional perspectives like the ones Hollywood biopics sometimes tend to adopt. However, Life Itself is an informative, entertaining, heart-wrenching, and multi-faceted look into the life, career, and mindset of a man whose strove to derive happiness and meaning from so many of his endeavors. I don't know if they ever met, but I'm sure Roger Ebert and Roberto Benigni would wholeheartedly agree: La vita e bella. Life truly is beautiful.