Completely Lacks the Magic of the First One

Rating: 4/10 (1 November 2015)

Let me make something clear: I flat out loved the first Pitch Perfect movie with an insane passion. I saw it seven times in theaters, and listened to the soundtrack nonstop. Even today, I give that movie a 9.5/10. After they announced they were making a sequel, I was beyond excited and followed all the news. I was pumped to finally see it, so it really makes me sad to say this, but Pitch Perfect 2 is just....really not a good movie
First of all, I want to point out: Pitch Perfect 2 assumes that the audience has seen the first film, as there is no introduction to any of the characters and they expect you to already be familiar with the characters and events of the first. Therefore, I do believe it is fair to compare it to the first movie, and look at this movie as a sequel rather than its own movie. On a related note, I will also assume everyone is familiar with the names from the first movie throughout the review.
Now, what is Pitch Perfect 2 about? Along with A LOT of subplots, one of the Bellas' performances goes embarrassingly wrong, and because of it they are banned from performing in any competitions, and a deal is made where if the Bellas win the world championship, they will be fully reinstated as an active acapella group. More or less, this is the main plot of the film.
Before getting into any negatives, let's talk about what was good about the movie. The first Pitch Perfect made Anna Kendrick my celebrity crush, and she isn't any less adorable in this than she was in the first. I enjoyed her character's arc much more than anything else about this movie. Then of course, I can't review this movie without talking about the music. Most of the music in this movie is enjoyable and fun to listen to, and the surprising "song cameos" are really fun, as they were in the first. Now, this makes me very sad to say, but....that's it for the positives of Pitch Perfect 2.
I think the biggest thing that makes Pitch Perfect 2 suffer is the writing. Aside from all the jokes that fall flat, all of the supporting characters from the first are completely glossed over and are underused. For example, the sex-crazed girl from the first has less than 10 lines throughout the entire film. Of these lines, only one of them is about her sex obsession, which was such a big part of her character. Then Chloe has an exaggerated version of the character arc that Aubrey had in the first: she needs to realize that the Bellas isn't her life and she needs to move on. Then the character who gets the most focus is the newcomer, Emily (played by Hailee Steinfeld). I honestly found her presence to have no point other than to give the movie another subplot to fill in the runtime.
Speaking of subplots, this movie is FULL of them. At least five of the characters have their own arc, all while the main plot is going on. Then there is an extremely underdeveloped "everyone needs to grow up" type of arc that involved all the characters and went on and off throughout the movie. Honestly, I felt this arc should have been the main plot movie, or at least the overall tone/message of it. With all the subplots, it almost felt as if the writers wished the first Pitch Perfect was a TV show and tried to condense a season's worth of development and arcs into one movie. Then it also felt like the writers tried to capitalize on the small stuff in the first one that everyone really liked. Everyone liked the ambiguous relationship between Fat Amy and Bumper, so they gave it its own subplot. Everyone loved the acapella announcer who was implied to be a misogynist, so they made him say a sexist comment almost every time he was on screen. Everyone loved the weird remarks that the quiet, Asian girl made, so they completely amped up her weirdness.
As for the directing, I do like Elizabeth Banks as an actress, but I was really not fond of her as a director. The directing with the dancing was a lot more sexualized and less focused than the first one, and there were a handful of slow-motion sequences of the girls partying that served no purpose to the plot and brought the film to a screeching halt.
However, the BIGGEST problem I had with Pitch Perfect 2 was the music. Even though I did mentioned the music as one of my positives, I felt no need to listen to the soundtrack after the movie ended. Even now, I can't remember 4/5ths of the songs that were sung in the movie off the top of my head. That was one of the things that made the first Pitch Perfect so special. After I saw the first one, I bought the soundtrack and could not stop listening to it. With the sequel, there were only two songs throughout the entire movie that I was remotely interested in listening to again. The music does not have the magic that the music in the previous movie did, and because of this, the music can't carry the movie on its own, which would have been possible if it had the charm of the first.
In the end, Pitch Perfect 2 almost made me forget how much I loved the first Pitch Perfect, and is probably my biggest disappointment of 2015. As I watched this movie, my rating went down from a 6/10, to a 5/10, and then finally to a 4/10. I do not see myself re- watching this any time in the future, and I highly recommend just skipping this one entirely and sticking with the first film.