Elizabeth Banks had never directed a feature before Pitch Perfect 2. She had spent years in front of the camera, and she had played Gail Abernathy-McKadden, the smug a cappella commentator, in the 2012 film that turned college singing into a box-office franchise. So Universal handed her the sequel, Kay Cannon wrote the script, and the Barden University Bellas came back bigger, louder and considerably more international.
Trailer, via Pitch Perfect.
Muffgate and the Kennedy Center
The Bellas open Pitch Perfect 2 as three-time ICCA national champions, led by senior Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick) and three-time super senior Chloe Beale (Brittany Snow). Then comes the scandal the film calls “Muffgate.” Performing at the Kennedy Center for President Barack Obama’s birthday, Patricia “Fat Amy” Hobart (Rebel Wilson) rips her pants and exposes her genitalia in front of the President. The Bellas are suspended from the ICCAs. Beca talks her way into a deal: win the A Cappella World Championship, a competition no American team has ever won, and the group is reinstated.
That is a sturdy comic engine, and it is also the film’s central problem. The first Pitch Perfect was small — a campus movie about misfits finding a sound. The sequel needs a world title, a German nemesis and a redemption arc, so it keeps reaching for scale.
Das Sound Machine
The nemesis is Das Sound Machine, the German powerhouse that replaces the Bellas on their victory tour and arrives as favorite to win Worlds. Its leaders are Kommissar (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) and Pieter Krämer (Flula Borg), who mock the Bellas at a car show and then beat them at a riff-off. The riff-off brings in the Treblemakers, the Tone Hangers — former Treblemakers including Bumper Allen (Adam DeVine), now working as a Barden security guard after a stint with John Mayer — and, for reasons the film never bothers to justify, the Green Bay Packers. The Bellas make the final two and lose to DSM.
Bumper is also Fat Amy’s casual love interest, which gives the sequel one of its few running threads that pays off rather than just repeats. DeVine plays the joke straight, and Wilson remains the film’s most reliable weapon. Her Fat Amy describes herself as “the best singer in Tasmania with teeth,” and the line lands because Wilson commits to it without a wink.
Emily Junk and the Flashlight
The new Bella is Emily Junk (Hailee Steinfeld), a freshman legacy whose mother Katherine (Katey Sagal) once sang in the group. Because the suspension bars auditions, Emily walks into the sorority house on her own and sings an unfinished song called “Flashlight.” The Bellas decide she is in — technically they never held a tryout, so technically they broke no rule. It is the film’s cleanest piece of plotting, and Steinfeld is the best addition to the cast.
Kendrick, meanwhile, carries a second storyline: Beca has secretly taken an internship at the recording studio Residual Heat. Only Jesse Swanson (Skylar Astin), her boyfriend and the Treblemakers’ leader, knows at first. Fat Amy finds out later. The internship is where Pitch Perfect 2 wants to say something about what Beca actually wants, and it is where the movie loses its nerve.
Two Franchises, Two Scales
| Pitch Perfect (2012) | Pitch Perfect 2 (2015) | |
|---|---|---|
| Director | Not Banks’s debut | Elizabeth Banks, directorial debut |
| Stakes | ICCA national title | A Cappella World Championship |
| Antagonist | Rival campus groups | Das Sound Machine, Germany |
| New lead | Beca Mitchell | Emily Junk |
| Worldwide gross | $115.4 million | $287.5 million |
The numbers tell their own story. Pitch Perfect 2 grossed $287.5 million worldwide, passing the original’s $115.4 million in five days. It became the highest-grossing musical comedy of all time, overtaking School of Rock at $131.3 million. A third film, Pitch Perfect 3, followed on December 22, 2017.
What the Sequel Buys and Loses
The ensemble is deep and the film knows it. Brittany Snow’s Chloe has deliberately failed her diploma three times to stay in the group, a joke the movie treats as devotion rather than pathology. Ester Dean’s Cynthia Rose, Hana Mae Lee’s Lilly, Alexis Knapp’s Stacie, Chrissie Fit’s Flo and Ben Platt’s Benji all return, and Benji’s crush on Emily gives the B-plot a pulse. Banks and John Michael Higgins are back as the commentators, and their routine is the same routine.
That is the trade Pitch Perfect 2 makes. It buys scale and pays in specificity. The riff-off, the car show, the international trip — each set piece is bigger than the last, and none of them is as funny as the first film’s simplest scenes. The movie keeps telling us the Bellas need to strengthen the bonds of friendship and sisterhood, then shows us a montage instead of a friendship.
Banks, to her credit, directs cleanly. The performance sequences are staged with real confidence for a first-timer, and the film never drags at 115 minutes. Cannon’s script has jokes, and enough of them land to keep the thing moving. But a sequel that has to justify its own existence tends to explain itself, and Pitch Perfect 2 explains itself constantly.
The score is 6.3 of 10.
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