Pitch Perfect 2

It is axiomatic that a movie with a 2, or a 3, or a 7 (Furious 7, oh, the horror, the horror!) is highly unlikely to be as good as the first one was. There are exceptions, but not many. This is a case in point. As I watched this loud, overblown, over-produced cookie I kept trying to put my finger on what went wrong. It boiled down to that sweet little ditty, “The Cup Song.” It was bright and cheerful, simple, with a cappella harmonies precisely where they should be. Anna Kendrick sang it solo, and then made a terrific music video out of it. Everyone loved it. School kids in Ireland sang it in Gaelic! In a word, it was charming.

That’s what they forgot to put into this movie: charm. Instead we get gross-out jokes (okay, they had two vomit scenes in the original that I’d have happily edited out), and repeats of the same old shticks until they were all tiresome. If I never hear the lip-farting sounds of a “beat box” rapper I’ll be a happy man. At one point they reprise “The Cup Song,” sitting around a campfire. It only made me sad. Not even my love of Anna Kendrick and Hailee Steinfeld could do anything to save this cash-in mess.