Movie Review: Pitch Perfect 2

The sequel to 2012’s sleeper hit has aca-arrived, though star aca-Anna Kendrick seems poised to make her aca-exit from the franchise. It’s aca-academic.

How are we going to explain this to our children?

The re-ascension of a cappella music - on our watch - will surely be among our generation’s most inexplicable pop culture relics, alongside Paleo, selfie sticks and the band Magic!

We can credit the resurrection to Glee and their dreamy Dalton Academy Warblers, yet the lion’s share of the blame belongs with Pitch Perfect, the amiable underdog musical that made synchronised, vocal-only renditions of hit songs so palatable; enjoyable, even. How dare they?

It’s hard to recall a time before all those unaccompanied musical covers began polluting YouTube. I suppose we shouldn’t fault Anna Kendrick and her Barden Bellas for inspiring them. Theirs was a perfectly delightful movie. The fallout could not have been predicted.

So, let’s try not to hold this against them as we head into Pitch Perfect 2, which, it turns out, is just as pleasant as the original, and equally convincing that a cappella can be totally watchable when executed correctly. It’s like preparing blowfish as a meal: let an amateur handle it, we’ll all wind up sick.

Three years after the events of the first flick, the Barden Bellas are reigning a cappella champs, though their rep is ruined in a (literal) flash by Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), going commando during a performance for President Obama.

Banned from future U.S. competitions, their one shot at redemption comes in a worldwide showdown pitting them against Germany’s ultra-efficient Das Sound Machine. (Side note: In this era of international turmoil, isn’t it nice to rely on Germany as our non-threatening cinematic villains again?)

Our heroine, Becca (Anna Kendrick), isn’t so cut up by the Bellas’ fall from grace, however. She’s more interested in life after college and her promising internship under a prickly music producer (Keegan-Michael Key). The always-wonderful Kendrick may similarly be itching to move on from this budding franchise (one “Cups” performance too many?) because the picture goes to great pains to line up her successor in Hailee Steinfeld, another Oscar nominee, for True Grit.

A new recruit to their sorority, Steinfeld’s Emily Junk has long dreamed of joining the supposedly inseparable Bellas. She finds, instead, that the sisterhood is tearing apart like some overused travelling pants, due to Becca’s increasing distance from the gang and Chloe’s (Brittany Snow) increasing panic over a potential loss to the Germans.

But mostly, the plot is just an excuse for sing-offs, training montages and celebrity cameos. Hey, no excuse necessary when the sideshows are that fun.

30 Rock writer Kay Cannon returns to script, peppering the feature with plenty of strange, spunky witticisms for the cast to swap. Rebel Wilson, only recommended in small doses, has many of the best. Producer and actor Elizabeth Banks takes over the directorial helm this time around, and she does well to keep proceedings moving smoothly, even as the picture sheds any semblance of a narrative near the climax.

This makes Pitch Perfect 2 the rare Hollywood production starring, written by and directed by women, mirroring its predecessor’s tale of a plucky band of girls trying to stake their claim in an overly masculine world. Admittedly, in that movie, it was the world of collegiate a cappella singing, and not the testosterised world of Hollywood, though the glass ceiling remains the same, whether it’s guarded by Avengers or Whiffenpoofs.

The singing itself is not precisely the highlight here, though a five-way a cappella showdown centering on “songs about butts” has some electricity to it. So too do the performances of Das Sound Machine and its brilliantly funny front-people (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen and Flula Borg, embracing caricature).

Above all else, Pitch Perfect 2 is a sleek joke-delivery system, interrupting its playful songs with goofy non sequiturs and good-spirited gags. It’s basically the Jimmy Fallon of musicals.

3.5/5

In cinemas May 7. Rated M for sexual references.