Plezsno

I'm trapped in a room on my 11th day of quarantine. If I hadn't already worn out Netflix, I wouldn't have finished this. Red herrings and repetition drag this into at least two more hours than it needed to be.

OK, maybe it's my fault. I'm sure some sci-fi nerds will blame me, but I can't find a reason to like this movie. I left the theater feeling like I missed something, like there is some huge plot point that passed me by and my lack of intelligence is getting in the way of enjoying the movie.

The cinematography, easily the best part of the movie, is self-indulgent as if the director told the editors, "We paid a lot of money for these visually spectacular sets; put them on-screen until they are a complete distraction from the story line."

The music is so grating it rivals the sets in its level of obnoxiousness. At more than one point, I felt myself falling asleep, only to be jolted awake by the sounds of high school brass section competing to see who can play the lowest note.

Add to those, the unexplained plot points and the movie is a recipe for walking out. Although I didn't leave, I haven't felt so compelled to do so since Leprechaun in 1993. If the rest of my party would have hinted they were done, I would have been out the door.

In the end, I don't think the fault is mine. I think it's in the movie's producers who are trying to capitalize on the names, including Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, and Blade Runner, while making a movie that plays well to foreign box offices.

If Anchorman spawned a lovechild with High School Musical, it would abound with sophomoric one-liners between energetic musical numbers. And thusly, Pitch Perfect 2 feels like it was belched from that very birth canal. As the plot develops, it becomes more and more formulaic. Deeply meaningful, though, is not what this film wants to be when it grows up. Along side some jokes that would make 3rd graders giggle intensely, the Anchorman-esque humor takes shots at cultural and racial biases. This style of humor may give some of the more hoity-toity among us a reason to snub the film. I,on the other hand, laughed so hard I did some crop dusting of my own. (My apologies to those sitting near me.) When the plot or jokes stall, energetic High School Musical-esque song mash-ups flourish while some scenes are hilariously forced.

Yes, indeed, this movie is not for those searching for the meaning of life in the B-roll. Instead, it is the opportunity to be enveloped in entertainment purely for the sake of a good laugh at a stupid joke.