Over the years there have been a lot of great movies about college and most of them have been comedies. I’m talking about movies like Animal House (1978) and Revenge of the Nerds (1984). The first Pitch Perfect movie may not exactly live up to Animal House, which is without a doubt in my mind the greatest college movie ever made, but I would say it is certainly the closest we have come to a really good female version of Revenge of the Nerds. I was actually pretty surprised at how good the first movie came off so that made me very worried about the sequel, Pitch Perfect 2.
The Barden Bellas are back and have been dominating a capella competition for three years. Now the girls are seniors and are on their last victory tour. After an embarrassing performance at John F. Kennedy Center for Performance Art involving a commando situation with Fat Amy they have been suspended from the victory tour and replaced by the best German a capella group Das Sound Machine. In order to regain their status the Barden Bellas decide to enter the international championship for a capella which will be an uphill battle considering no American team has ever won.
Sequels to comedy movies can be a tricky thing. It can be hard to pull off a comedy sequel without doing all the same jokes all over again. Thankfully Pitch Perfect 2 is an overall decent comedy sequel although they unfortunately do the regular modern day sequel thing by taking the same concept and just making it bigger. Anna Kendrick is back starring as Becca and they do a good job at following up the character’s passion for music producing. Skylar Astin is also back as her boyfriend although he doesn’t have near as much to do here as he did in the first movie. It almost seems like they decided to take some of his character’s dialogue and give it to Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy who turns out to be Becca’s friend and roomate in this movie even though that isn’t exactly clear in the beginning of the movie. That seemed a bit weird although I just went with it because this movie is suppose to be three years later and a lot can happen in that time. I’m also okay with it, because Rebel Wilson is great at what she does and it is just a matter of time before she is starring in her own comedies.
The best part about this sequel is that the Bellas have something they didn’t have in the first movie. A rival. The first movie kind of set up the really talented Adam DeVine’s character Bumper as their rival and he kind of just disappears in the middle of the movie. He is back in this movie and given more to do but it is mostly as a love interest for Fat Amy. The rivals in this movie end up being a German a capella group called Das Sound Machine lead by Kommissar (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) and Pieter Krämer (Flula Borg). These two actors and the entire concept of Das Sound Machine absolutely made this entire movie for me. They are extremely entertaining and hilariously over the top. Das Sound Machine is great because it is sort of a reference to Germany’s rich electronic music culture which included great old school electronic groups such as Kraftwerk and Nitzer Ebb.
The music for the most part is really good. The movie even portrays interesting commentary on remixes versus original music which I really liked. In this movie like in the original they have another version of “the riff off” between the Barden Bellas, Das Sound Machine, and some other great made up a capella groups. It is a highlight of the movie and incredibly funny. This movie was directed by Elizabeth Banks who produced the first movie and with this being her debut feature length movie as a director I think she did a terrific job. Even though it is very similar I felt that Pitch Perfect 2 was easily as good and as funny as the first movie.
Dave’s Rating- ★★★½ (3½ ) out of ★★★★★(5)
