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.
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