I really cannot say a whole lot about this movie because I don't remember a whole lot, despite seeing it yesterday. It was not my intention to see it, my friends wanted to and I wanted to get out of the house.
I saw the first Pitch Perfect only a few months ago. My roommates had it on and I watched it just because most of my friends have praised it and I had still never saw it. It was basically the new Mean Girls for me, I avoided it for so long because I thought it looked stupid. Then when I finally saw it, it wasn't that bad. I didn't think it was amazing, and though it has basically the same comedic style as Mean Girls, it wasn't as good as that. There has been a trend with female-driven comedies that have ranged from good to bad, at least in my opinion. It has nothing to do with the fact they're mostly women in these films, women and men are equally as funny. I think it is mostly the writing and the "how many vagina jokes can I cram into a single scene" problem. I had a film professor that compared The Hangover to Bridesmaids (I fucking hate Bridesmaids, by the way) and asked why one wasn't as successful as the other. His conclusion was the inability to relate to the characters of Bridesmaids like you can to The Hangover. I find this relevant to most other female-comedies. No body talks or acts like the women in Bridesmaids or The Heat. The same way nobody acts or talks like the women in Pitch Perfect. I can't relate to any of these girls because I'm not a passive-aggressive, self-absorbed bitch like most of these characters in these films. I seem to be the only early-twenties female out there that doesn't fall for these mediocre movies and I miss the days of 9 to 5 and She-Devil, but that is beside the point.
Anyways, sorry for that tangent. Pitch Perfect 2 was mediocre at its best. The first thing that really bothered me about it was how it didn't really have a consistent plot and it seemed to sway away from it a lot. It became more of a series of events rather than one cohesive story. But who cares about that when there is a shroud of dumb jokes. I did laugh at most of them, I'm not going to lie. It was mostly the most random moments that I thought was funny because I'm so random lulz.
The second thing that bothered me was the product placement. There's 2 types of PP in my book: Necessary PP, and Obnoxious PP. This film had the latter. Necessary PP would be if a character would be drinking a soda, they wouldn't be drinking from a blank can, they would be having a Coca- Cola more than likely. Obnoxious PP would be the camera showing the character picking up the Coca-Cola and drinking it with the label staring down at the camera at all times. There may be one or two lines were the characters says "Hey, do you want a Coca-Cola? I love Coca-Cola" or whatever. Throughout this movie there is obvious PP for Pantene, Cover Girl, M&Ms, Beats Headphones, Apple and many more. There is one scene were the girls are getting ready in the makeup room and talking, and in the background is a bag with the huge letters saying COVER GIRL. Its bad enough there was already commercials for Cover Girl tying in with Pitch Perfect 2 for the last couple weeks. I find that shit really annoying and it feels like the movie was only made to be a commercial rather than for the story. I understand PP is used to help pay for the production and what-not, but most audiences are not dumb enough to need those products to stare them down in order to get a message.
The third thing is most of the main characters in this film just weren't that captivating to me. Anna Kendrick, though a good actress, just isn't that pretty to me like she is for Reddit. She has the case the "Bitch Face" and it just bothers me. Rebel Wilson is ok, but she can do better than making fat jokes all the time. Side note- why do people always make fun of her, and Melissa McCarthy, for being fat like they don't know it? They know it, they embrace it, they don't make it seem like being fat is a good or bad thing, move on. I didn't understand why there were a few girls in the group that didn't have any lines compared to the other girls; why even have them? I found myself liking the side characters more than anything. David Cross and Keegan-Micheal Key were my favorites. Other than that, I didn't care for anyone's motivations or actions.
The forth thing is a song numbers. I don't like radio pop songs and that is what 90% of the songs they cover. It is also completely obvious that they had ghost singers the whole time. I know that ghost singers are used for most musical films, from West Side Story to Sweeney Todd, but they at least make it believable. I just was not getting into the auto tune, the remixing, the songs I hear over and over again on the radio and at the club that drive me up a wall. Some times there was just so many songs going in and out and all at once it got pretty jarring. The beat boxing was the only thing I enjoyed.
I really can't believe I just wrote so much for a movie I had no feelings for. I neither loved it nor hated it, and I do recommend it to others if they're into these kind of bubblegum movies. Join me again for Jurassic World, I am so goddamn excited for this movie.
Grade: C
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