It's been a while since we had a full-fledge home video hit, a movie that did fine in theaters but that turned into a phenomenon at home, and most of the time, when that happens, the sequel ends up being a much bigger film than the first one.
“Pitch Perfect” was that full-fledged home video hit, and I'm guessing there are plenty of you who watched it any time you saw it go by on cable, over and over, so that the first film is basically burnt into your own personal hard drive by now. The characters, the songs, the jokes… all of it is aca-permanent now.
I'm excited to see Elizabeth Banks directing this time, and it certainly looks like she's up for staging both the musical numbers and the comedy set pieces. That opening with Fat Amy almost looks like a “Naked Gun” movie with the silhouettes of the Obamas and with the staging of the physical gag.
I love that last line, too. There are no prisoners in this kind of comedy, and everyone takes their lumps. There's a comedy voice to these films that is ruder and more aggressive than most female-driven comedies, and I think that's a perfectly lovely world to live in. Like the “Fast and Furious” franchise, it looks like the thing that is going to become more important is the idea of the family we make, the people we surround ourselves with and go through things with and how those bonds sustain us.
The first film's certainly not a great movie, but it's an enormously charming movie, and that makes all the difference. There was real chemistry in the ensemble, and it looks like that has made the transition to the sequel intact. Now it's just a matter of how funny it can be and what songs they use.
Can't wait to see it for myself on May 15, 2015.