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May. 18th, 2015 10:53 amI saw Pitch Perfect 2 yesterday. My mind is unsettled.
In the realm of comedy, Pitch Perfect 2 was very broad, even broader than the first film. Crass sex jokes and jokes about how weird foreigners are make up a lot of the actual jokes in the film, and that is not typically the sort of humor I tend to go for. And yet, with a few exceptions, I laughed at this movie. I'm trying to figure out why.
I think a major reason is the surreality of the plot. The film opens on the Bellas performing for the President at the Kennedy Center, as John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks's ICCA commentator characters give play by play. Which... WHY? When have you ever seen a random Kennedy Center performance with play by play? The performance goes poorly, leading to the ICCAs suspending the Bellas from competition, but they will let them be reinstated if they do well at the World Championship... even though ICCA stands for International Championship of College A Cappella, and in the real world has hosted international teams for at least a few years now. No American team has ever won this imaginary World Championship, because according to Higgins's character, "The world hates us."
The premise doesn't just make no sense. It actively requires you to suspend all sorts of disbelief in order to embrace it as a vehicle for great singing. So when it turns out that the German team are a bunch of emotionless robots who wear fetishy costumes with leather and fishnets, it's not entirely clear whose expense the joke is at- or if it is even intended as a joke at all. (Probably a joke, though. They sing the English language version of Der Commissar!!! WWWWTTTTTTFFFFFFF???????) When Florencia delivers a sustained stream of 'jokes' about the ravages of the war she survived in Guatemala in order to smuggle herself into America, in comparison to the Bellas' first world problems, the jokes land better than I would expect because there is no sustained comic tone that they puncture, so they almost work as character beats. It likewise almost doesn't matter that every thing Cynthia says is "Look at me, I'm a lesbian," because nobody responds to it in any way when she says it. Pitch Perfect 2 is too weird a movie for offensive jokes to come out as jokes, so instead they come out as just part of the weirdness of the worldbuilding.
Besides, we're there for the music. We don't care if Cynthia is a lesbian, we're there because she's Ester motherfucking Dean singing. Even more than the first movie, this film trusts the music to do the storytelling. When the Bellas gives a disastrous performance in a senior citizen center, we don't need the John Michael Higgins to tell us that the Bellas have lost their sound and their identity. When they sing a no tapping Cup song in unison on their retreat, we don't need Aubrey to tell us they've found it again. The movie is a sustained argument about the valences of songs- what song to sing, how to sing it, when to sing it. What does an original song say? What does a remix say? What does a 1960s cover mean, vs. a 1990s cover, vs. a 2010s cover? What is originality, what is talent, what is an individual contribution and what develops in collaboration? It's a really compelling presentation even in its strange packaging.
In the realm of comedy, Pitch Perfect 2 was very broad, even broader than the first film. Crass sex jokes and jokes about how weird foreigners are make up a lot of the actual jokes in the film, and that is not typically the sort of humor I tend to go for. And yet, with a few exceptions, I laughed at this movie. I'm trying to figure out why.
I think a major reason is the surreality of the plot. The film opens on the Bellas performing for the President at the Kennedy Center, as John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks's ICCA commentator characters give play by play. Which... WHY? When have you ever seen a random Kennedy Center performance with play by play? The performance goes poorly, leading to the ICCAs suspending the Bellas from competition, but they will let them be reinstated if they do well at the World Championship... even though ICCA stands for International Championship of College A Cappella, and in the real world has hosted international teams for at least a few years now. No American team has ever won this imaginary World Championship, because according to Higgins's character, "The world hates us."
The premise doesn't just make no sense. It actively requires you to suspend all sorts of disbelief in order to embrace it as a vehicle for great singing. So when it turns out that the German team are a bunch of emotionless robots who wear fetishy costumes with leather and fishnets, it's not entirely clear whose expense the joke is at- or if it is even intended as a joke at all. (Probably a joke, though. They sing the English language version of Der Commissar!!! WWWWTTTTTTFFFFFFF???????) When Florencia delivers a sustained stream of 'jokes' about the ravages of the war she survived in Guatemala in order to smuggle herself into America, in comparison to the Bellas' first world problems, the jokes land better than I would expect because there is no sustained comic tone that they puncture, so they almost work as character beats. It likewise almost doesn't matter that every thing Cynthia says is "Look at me, I'm a lesbian," because nobody responds to it in any way when she says it. Pitch Perfect 2 is too weird a movie for offensive jokes to come out as jokes, so instead they come out as just part of the weirdness of the worldbuilding.
Besides, we're there for the music. We don't care if Cynthia is a lesbian, we're there because she's Ester motherfucking Dean singing. Even more than the first movie, this film trusts the music to do the storytelling. When the Bellas gives a disastrous performance in a senior citizen center, we don't need the John Michael Higgins to tell us that the Bellas have lost their sound and their identity. When they sing a no tapping Cup song in unison on their retreat, we don't need Aubrey to tell us they've found it again. The movie is a sustained argument about the valences of songs- what song to sing, how to sing it, when to sing it. What does an original song say? What does a remix say? What does a 1960s cover mean, vs. a 1990s cover, vs. a 2010s cover? What is originality, what is talent, what is an individual contribution and what develops in collaboration? It's a really compelling presentation even in its strange packaging.