Wilson riff, gesticulate and manage to be utterly crude and impossibly graceful at the same time, as if she were the solution to a complicated math problem involving Divine, Dame Edna and Doris Day. Maybe they will blossom in “Pitch Perfect 3.” Meanwhile, this installment has improbable, inspired musical numbers and frequent occasions when everyone else wisely stands back and lets Ms. Not every joke is in the best taste, and there are some failures of imagination, especially in the way the nonwhite Bellas (Ester Dean, Hana Mae Lee and Chrissie Fit) are confined to the margins and to the kind of stereotyping that tries to subvert itself with knowingness. And its arrival is another sign of the extent to which feminism is reshaping the landscape of American comedy, and not a moment too soon. “Pitch Perfect 2” is not as barbed as “Girls” or as anarchic as “ Broad City” (it’s also studiously PG-13), but it lives in their neighborhood - or maybe a nearby suburb. Dudes are nice to have around, but the pursuit of them is a whole lot less than the meaning of life. The casual busyness of the plots does not distract from the essence of the movie, which is the pleasure and occasional stress of hanging out with like-minded girlfriends as you ease your way toward adulthood. The glory of “Pitch Perfect” is that it’s devoted, above all, to the friendship and shared ambition of young women, and that it finds plenty of room within that premise for raunchiness, ridiculousness and warmth. It’s all very cute, and kind of beside the point. Not to spoil anything, but she does and also gets a romantic subplot of her own, with a tongue-tied crooner played by Ben Platt.
New Bella blood arrives in the person of Emily (Hailee Steinfeld), who enrolls at Barden with the sole ambition of following in the footsteps of her mother (Katey Sagal) and becoming a Bella. Banks, playing a variation on her “Hunger Games” smiley-underminer role), dissension in their own ranks and of course those Germans, whose leader is an icily charismatic Valkyrie (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen). They must overcome the skepticism of powerful podcasters (John Michael Higgins and Ms. Obama, becomes an international news story - they set out to sing their way back to the top. Some of the underdog appeal is gone, but a victory lap can be its own kind of fun, and more is not necessarily something to complain about, especially when what there is more of is Fat Amy.Īfter an onstage wardrobe malfunction makes the Bellas pariahs in the a cappella world - the mishap, in front of an audience including President and Mrs. Its success has allowed (or perhaps forced) this installment to be bigger, louder and wilder, with new, sometimes redundant characters, celebrity cameos - Snoop Dogg! Jake Tapper! The Green Bay Packers! - and artificially elevated dramatic stakes. “ Pitch Perfect” was a charming campus comedy with humor that was naughty and sweet and had a sharp sense of the pop-culture moment. You can tell this is a sequel by the occasionally frantic mood and a sense of scale that feels a little off sometimes. And if this is what musical comedy looks like on film today, that’s O.K., too: the music is catchy and the jokes connect, even when they’re easy. If the 100-odd minutes of “Pitch Perfect 2,” briskly directed by Elizabeth Banks from a jam-packed script by Kay Cannon, consisted only of that scene, I wouldn’t be disappointed.
It’s a single-elimination contest with strict rules, and the first category is Songs About Butts. The other contestants include the Treblemakers, the Bellas’ male counterparts a highly disciplined German vocal ensemble and some Green Bay Packers.
At one point in “ Pitch Perfect 2,” for no especially compelling narrative reason, the Barden Bellas, an all-girl a cappella group at a fictional Georgia college, find their way to an underground sing-off hosted by a pajama-clad harmony geek played by David Cross.
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