The Death of Cinema

Rating: 2/10 (31 May 2015)

The title to this review may put you off from reading it but I will explain why I chose this title later on. First of all I would like to point out I did enjoy the first Pitch Perfect, I thought the story was well done and it had many funny quotes and scenes, however I believe this film completely destroys it, to me it seems like the director just placed the actors where they wanted, gave them no script and told them just to go with it and yelled action and this is what came out. I felt the comedy was extremely awkward and some awkward comedy is funny in small amounts, by awkward comedy I mean in a film where a character does or says something awkward and the characters are stood there awkwardly silent pondering what to do next etc. And this can be funny, however I feel that the majority of where people believe is comedy is coming from is this awkwardness and it got very repetitive and did the exact opposite desired effect. At points I felt the only redeeming factor was everything 'Fat Amy' said as I did find myself laughing at the way she would say things however I felt this was used way too much and became bland and forced. I also despised the character from the first film who would whisper everything she said at inappropriate times that had nothing to do with the story, I can understand why people see this as funny as it's just random and doesn't make sense but I felt they forced it here too and not only did they bring that character back they added another character who everything she said was a stereotype of her nationality and i found it extremely unfunny and irrelevant. I also found there was a huge amount of racial comedy coming from the 'John Smith' character that I didn't find remotely funny, not the fact it was racist but the jokes were not even jokes it just blatantly pointed out extreme stereotypes and didn't even attempt to make jokes of them. Back on to the point of improvisation and no script, I do believe improvisation can be very funny, look at Joe Pesci's 'funny guy' speech in Goodfellas for example, but I just believe that it was the only attempted humour in the film and it just didn't work. The story of the film is also extremely cliché and is actually basically the story of the first film repeated on a larger scale and I found it very predictable and boring. Finally my point about the title 'The Death of Cinema', I made this point because as I left the cinema after watching this film I overheard someone say how they hadn't seen a film so funny that made them laugh like that in ages, this made me sad to the think a mediocre, poorly shot, awkward film like this could be the funniest someone has seen, of course this is a matter of opinion you would say and I am obliged to agree that yes everyone has their own opinion, however to then back up my point of the death of cinema, this film grossed more at the box office than Avengers: Age of Ultron and Mad Max: Fury Road combined, I am not saying that these are perfect films but when films that have just been handed money to make a sequel and do a half-arsed attempt are making more money than ones who genuinely believe in the craft of film and attempt to make the best film they could have made it does make me question for the state of cinema and film. I do believe comedy is becoming increasingly more difficult in film nowadays to pick out the good ones from the bad ones as many movies made nowadays are simply improvised and poorly shot so if you're looking for a recommendation in what I believe the definitive guide to comedy that is not only funny in dialogue but gives you the dying art of visual comedy I will send you no further than the work of Edgar Wright and his Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy as a point of comparison for what I believe comedy should aim towards.