Title: Pitch Perfect 2
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Elizabeth Banks
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Hailee Steinfeld
Runtime: 1 hr 54 mins

What It Is: The Barden Bella are back, and they’re pitchier than ever! Beca (Kendrick), Amy (Wilson) and the whole crew are back with a new adventure, and once again they’re the underdogs. After a mishap causes them to be banned from competition they have one chance to redeem thmeselves…become the first American team to win the World Acapella Championships. Opposing them is a well-oiled German machine called Das Sound Machine. The Bellas have lost their sound, and in order to find it must go through some trials and tribulations.

What We Think: Much like the first one the Barden Bellas continue being fun. Sadly outside of the relationship between Bumper (Andy Devine) and Amy your left with a hollow pop culture shell. Its a tasty pop song coated piece of saccharin, and that’s delicious, but it does not make the narrative interesting. Banks’ direction seemed disjointed and was off putting, an overall nuisance to an otherwise fun piece of fluff. I mentioned the Bellas being fun, and they are however some of the newer Bellas aren’t well developed and instead rely too much on stereotypes ( the overly Hispanic Hispanic, or the wide-eyed freshman). That truly hurts the movie more than anything else. Music continues to be centerpiece, and while there’s no “Cups” moment here (by that I mean a moment that transcends the movie itself), there’s at least some chuckles to be had.

Our Grade: C+, Keegen-Michael Key steals every single scene he’s in as Beca’s producer boss. It lacks some of the sparkle of the first installment, and some of that might be due to the directionless direction. On the other hand it isn’t a total trainwreck, and I look very forward to Banks’ next directing gig on something she isn’t as familiar with. See it if you enjoyed the first one, if you’ve never seen the first one than I am probably not going to convince you otherwise. See it if you want, but keep those expectation quelled.