Two movies for the price of one

Rating: 3/10 (17 January 2018)

I was pretty excited to see this movie since I loved the other two but was wary of what it might be like. I went opening day to see it and left the theater feeling horribly disappointed.
The premise started out well enough with the Bellas being washed up and trying to find their place in the world, then going on a final tour as a last hurrah. It seemed like a fun idea and the other groups made the musical number fantastic and I was excited to see where it would go. But then the movie pulled a 180 and suddenly turned into some espionage spy thriller and I was so confused as to why. All the fun tour stuff basically stopped to make room for this new plot that seemed completely unnecessary, only to have the previous tour stuff come back at the very end. It felt like two movies going on, trying to compete with each other and I did not like it.
Don't get me wrong, there were funny bits with the spy stuff and Fat Amy kicks ass in the last twenty minutes, but for a movie about music, there wasn't much singing after the first half hour or so. It felt like 'quick, get the singing out of the way so we can move onto the action' but the action wasn't nearly as exciting as the singing and even that was subpar. There's even a scene with Amy and her dad where she looks like she's going to sing with him on stage but they cut and go to Becca and the others instead, and next time we see Fat Amy and her dad, they're laughing and have made up. I'm 99% sure there's a deleted scene here they did horrible at masking.
The end was cute but didn't make sense to me. The Bellas hated the way their lives were going then suddenly when Becca gets offered the gig, they suddenly admit they didn't want to sing at all and love how their lives are? This especially annoyed me in Chloe's case since the whole second movie was her trying to stay with the Bellas as long as possible and now at the end of this she decides 'nah, I'm good not singing anymore'. It all just felt out of left field but maybe that's just me.
Long story short, if you want an action espionage movie with secret-off shore bank accounts, explosions and some karaoke thrown in here and there, then by all means go see this. If that's not your cup of tea, don't waste your time and just re-watch the first two instead.