After barely surviving a mandatory shutdown in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, the executive class running some of the largest film studios in the world decided that they weren’t quite ridiculously rich enough yet and furthermore they hadn’t taken enough liberties – financial, creative and moral – with those employed by them.

And so the actors and writers collectively said no and downed tools for five months in a dispute over pay (including residual payments in the age of streaming), working conditions, and especially the increasing threat of artificial intelligence being used to not only write screenplays based on algorithms but to steal the likenesses of actors (living and dead) and store them in perpetuity without just compensation.

With Hollywood productions quiet for half the year and none of the “talent” allowed to promote those movies that were completed prior to the strikes, we ended up with a more limited and less enthusiastically received slate of major releases. Not even superhero movies or franchise sequels fronted by Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise were guaranteed hits anymore.

Despite all this, 2023 ended up being a pretty good year for cinema, with plenty of examples of not only memorable blockbusters but of distinct filmmakers leaving their mark and under-represented communities providing vibrancy and freshness to a myriad of new stories. Based upon UK release dates, these are my 10 Best Films of 2023.

Follow me @SSPThinksFilm on X (Twitter).

10. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah Review

2023 has been a great year for films about how Gen-Z processes their major life experiences, and this delightful, hilarious little film starring most of the Sandler clan (including Adam as an adorably schlubby dad) is up there with the very best.

As she approaches her her 13th birthday and the Jewish coming-of-age ritual, Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) is determined to make her Bat Mitzvah the most perfect and memorable of her peer group, including that of BFF Lydia (Samantha Lorraine). But things get a lot more complicated as hormones, teenage crushes and petty but damaging psychological manipulation via social media enter the mix.

Five years ago, Bo Burnham made his memorable feature debut with Eighth Grade and told one of the most connective, visceral stories about becoming a teenager in years. Sammi Cohen’s film has the same aim but demonstrates how seismically culture has changed in just half a decade, all through a Jewish cultural lens. There may have never been a more challenging time to be growing up in an always-online age, and Alison Peck’s insightful script in addition to the across-the-board wonderfully naturalistic performances help to make this an unexpectedly profound crowd-pleaser.

9. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 Review

#JusticeforJamesGunn incarnate, the final chapter of the unlikeliest a-hole superhero team’s story shatters expectations and satisfyingly delivers on almost every level.

After years of defending the countless worlds together, the Guardians team has reached a precarious place. Their leader Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) has slumped into a depressed, alcoholic stupor after losing the love of his life Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), and Rocket’s (Bradley Cooper) past as a bio-engineered test subject comes back to haunt him in a very real way. Can the team come together one last time and save the galaxy, and themselves?

Marvel is seen as a pretty risk-averse studio and certainly much of their recent output has been received with a shrug from many viewers, but Guardians Vol 3 shows what happens when one of the best directors they partnered with is left to finish the story he wanted to tell. The action has never been more polished and visually dazzling, the performances from people and animated raccoons alike so honest and full of pain, Gunn’s love of animals so prominent as the team go up against a truly detestable figure who causes pain for the hell of it.

Recommended for you: MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranked

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse swung into theaters in December of 2018 and immediately captivated audiences with its revolutionary take on the beloved superhero genre and breathtaking animation style. Directed by the talented trio of Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, and Bob Persichetti, this animated masterpiece defied conventions and soared to unprecedented heights.

The film successfully introduces the concept of the multiverse and seamlessly weaves together the stories of various Spider-People from different dimensions. At its core, the film follows the journey of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a teenager grappling with newfound powers in the wake of the death of his universe’s Spider-Man. His world is spun even more out of control as he meets alternate universe heroes that make him question if he is ready for his new responsibilities.

Accolades poured in for the film, with the crowning achievement being the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. This recognition affirmed not only the technical brilliance of the animation but also the emotional depth and storytelling prowess that elevated Into the Spider-Verse beyond the status of a mere superhero film.

As first time viewers delve into the intricate web of dimensions and the extraordinary journey of Miles, it becomes clear that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is more than a cinematic experience – it’s a groundbreaking achievement that redefined expectations for animated storytelling in the West and left an indelible mark on the superhero genre.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we are highlighting the 10 best moments from the film that define why Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse continues to enthral audiences, and we will explore its legacy as one of the best comic book movies of all time.

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

10. Welcome to the Spider-Verse

This is how you start a movie.

The rising intensity of the opening music. The glitching of the studio logos. The flashes of graffiti. Then blam: the intro fully kicks in and we are treated to the visual feast that is this movie. An explosion of colours and funky graphics inform us that Into the Spider-Verse is unlike any other comic book movie in that it is unashamed of its genre.

Following this is the opening monologue from Peter Parker (don’t get too attached), beginning the recurring “Alright, let’s do this one last time” gag. Peter, voiced by Chris Pine, gives a brief rundown of things most audiences will already know, narrating his life and the responsibilities that come with being Spider-Man. Yes, we’re technically seeing another screen Spider-Man origin story, but the writers make this one concise and fresh. This self-awareness lends itself nicely to some humorous moments, such as detailing the smaller Spider-Man duties, like having his own cereal or recording a Christmas album. 

Furthermore, there are plenty of references to Spider-Man in pop culture for fans to feast on. Did anyone expect them to reference the abominable Spider-Man popsicle? The animators even draw comparison to other Spidey iterations on screen, like the upside down kiss, the train scene in Spider-Man 2, and the legendary dance scene from Spider-Man 3.

It is the film’s thesis statement: funny, fast-paced and visually spectacular. The perfect introduction to one of the most unique comic book movies. Simultaneously, these opening 2 minutes are a celebration of all things Spider-Man, and a reminder why the iconic hero has endured for so long on page, on screen, and in wider popular culture.

Recommended for you: 10 Best Moments from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy

9. Meet Miles

A film is arguably only as good as its characters, and a film filled with fantastical Spider-people could have a hard time making its protagonist stand out. Within seconds of meeting Miles Morales, its clear audiences have a beloved hero to root for.

The first time we see Miles, he is caught up in his passions: artwork and music. His singing is gradually drowned out by his parents calling his name. He is pulled out of his daydream and into an all too relatable scenario – a teenager late for school. 

This quickly transitions to a high-energy montage showcasing Miles’ daily life, complete with the vibrant backdrop of Brooklyn. We are immersed in the sights and sounds of Miles’ world as they see a new side to him. As he walks through his neighbourhood, he is cool and approachable. His effortless charm makes him instantly likable. The dynamic animation, coupled with a hip-hop soundtrack, creates a sense of kinetic energy that mirrors the pulse of Miles’ urban environment. As Miles parades through the streets, leaving stickers of his artwork, he trips and is caught by his dad, a police officer. We are reminded that, despite his coolness, he’s still an awkward kid. These relatable struggles form the necessary strong connections between Miles and each of us.

These first moments with Miles do more for the film’s central character than a lot of comic book movies manage to do in their entire runtime. Miles’ humour and occasional awkwardness make him endearing. He embodies the youthful enthusiasm and idealism associated with adolescence, making him a perfect vessel for audiences diving into this larger than life story.

Follow me on X (Twitter) – @poor_and_clean

10. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Starring the incredible Aubrey Plaza, and loveable goofs Mark Duplass and Jake Johnson, Safety Not Guaranteed is a heart-warming time travel jape. While it has big names attached – including director Colin Trevorrow, who went on to steer the wheel of the Jurassic World franchise, it has a real indie charm.

It begins with an intriguing want-ad in a local Washington newspaper. Jeff (Jake Johnson), a journalist at a different paper, assembles a motley crew to investigate. While everything is set up for us to believe Kenneth (Mark Duplass) is a weirdo, and delusional at the very least, he isn’t and the film’s beauty lies in how deftly it draws the viewer to his side.

It has heart, humour and Jake Johnson. I’m not sure you need much else in a film.

9. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Review

As a rule, I don’t do superheroes. DC, Marvel, I don’t really care, they’re all the same, aren’t they?

I grew up in a strange era where Val Kilmer was Batman and Lois Lane was a Desperate Housewife and the genre just never really hooked me. Then along came Miles Morales and I fell hard. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a visually stunning and standout offering in (what I and seemingly I alone feel is) a saturated market.

The Spider-verse animation is just incredible – unusual and unique. The film is brimming with detail and flashes of brilliance. I could watch it 100 times (100 more times) and notice something new with each viewing. The characters are larger than life yet somehow completely grounded and believable, and who knew the match up of Nicholas Cage and John Mulaney is what we needed in our lives? The soundtrack is perfect and the message behind it is so important.

The first time my kid saw it, she said, ‘oh so I could be spiderman’ and for that reason alone it deserves a mention in my Best Films of All Time.

Recommended for you: Spider-Man Movies Ranked

Film gets me where I live like little else and has done ever since I was a teenager. It’s almost impossible to pick just 10 films to stand in for over a century of my favourite form of artistic expression, so what follows are a combination of groundbreaking, ageless films and the most personally impactful cinematic works for me, today. 

Follow me on X (Twitter) – @SSPThinksFilm

10. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Review

This one’s a twofer. I love animation and I love superhero movies, and Spider-Verse is one of the finest examples of both to release in the last decade.

After being bitten by a radioactive spider, awkward teen Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is thrust into inter-dimensional superherodom when his universe’s Spider-Man is killed in action. Miles must overcome self-doubt and team up with the many very different spider-people from other realities to stop his, and all other worlds, from being destroyed. 

Animation is cinema, it has the potential to visualise anything you can imagine, and while I could have picked any number of films from Studio Ghibli, Laika, Disney or Pixar, nothing else was as revolutionary and influential to the medium’s aesthetic than Sony Picture Animation’s Spider-Verse in recent years. This didn’t look or feel quite like anything else, a living comic book packed with pleasing details and gags referring back to print mediums and constant movement and dynamism. 

Few adaptations of popular characters manage to sum up their very essence with a single perfect phrase, but this film distils it all with “anybody can wear the mask”. So many superhero movies get the basics fundamentally wrong, but this gets it just so right – Spider-Man has always had incredible powers but struggled to balance his superhero responsibilities with everyday ones, and the same goes if you’re a dual heritage teenager, a cartoon pig or a black-and-white detective voiced by Nicolas Cage.

Recommended for you: Spider-Man Movies Ranked

9. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The titanic cultural influence of the MGM fantasy musical The Wizard of Oz is often criminally overlooked. Musicals speak to me as a form of extroverted expression I could never hope to take part in myself, but Oz also stands for the whole fantasy genre.

This rough adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s children’s fantasy novel follows young Dorothy Gale (instant star Judy Garland), a Kansas dreamer who is swept away to the magical land of Oz by a tornado where she is persecuted by the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton, still terrifying) as she quests to find her way home.

It wasn’t just the way film musicals were staged for decades it inspired, either. Next time you watch Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy and see the orc armies marching past the gates of Mordor, think about how similar the blocking and the aesthetic is to the patrols outside the Wicked Witch’s castle.  Speaking of the Wicked Witch, you know the classic green-skinned, warty-nosed, pointy-chinned default look for such characters at Halloween? That comes from this film as well. And Margaret Hamilton’s all-timer of a baddie performance in contrast to the uncomplicated good of Dorothy and her companions is still one to behold. 

The “it was all a dream, or was it?” story structure is clichéd now, but this helped start it all. Startling Technicolor fantasy is kept entirely separate from sepia reality (the moment one world becomes the other still takes your breath away), but there is always that playful, winking final scene for you to hope that Dorothy perhaps has further adventures on her horizon. 

Today, Transformers is one of the biggest blockbuster movie franchises on the block, the 14th most profitable of all time with over $5 billion at the worldwide box office (just behind Avatar and ahead of Despicable Me).

Seven live-action movies have been made to date, five of which have been overseen by producer-director Michael Bay before he handed the franchise keys over to up-and-coming directors. The initial film trilogy followed high school kid Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), who discovered Bumblebee and the heroic Autobots led by Optimus Prime hiding on Earth and was consequently drawn into their millennia-old war with the evil Decepticons, led by Megatron. For films four and five, the story shifted focus to single dad and inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and his aiding of the Autobots’ fight against new enemies around the world, both Transformer and human. Since then we have been following another generation of young heroes and their Autobot BFFs in a prequel/spinoff series.

But how do you even begin to rank over 1000 minutes of giant robots punching each other and causing catastrophic collateral damage on the human world in the process?

We here at The Film Magazine have chosen to give it a go. In this edition of Ranked, we’re ranking each of the live-action Transformers films from worst to best in terms of quality, entertainment and public perception, for this list: Live-Action Transformers Movies Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

7. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

The second Transformers movie sees Sam Witwicky’s first year of college interrupted by the Autobots and Decepticons’ continuing war, all the while an ancient enemy, the Fallen, plots to harvest the energy of the Sun for power.

A lot of this film’s ills – the short production cycle, starting filming without a finished script – you can blame on the WGA Writer’s Strike of 2007-2008, but others you cannot. A rushed film does not equal a lazy film – the money is all on screen from the massive explosions to the brutal forest fight between Optimus and three Decepticons, to the alien robot testicles dangling in front of John Turturro’s face – but you just don’t care about any of this hokum, who’s involved or why.

Bay just pulled another alien Macguffin out of his exhaust pipe, added an unearned and easily reversible major character death, mixed each with two really racist robots and called it a day. Revenge of the Fallen is not engaging, you hate all the characters and every supposed joke makes you feel like your brain cells are leaking when you’re not being actively offended.

6. Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)

The fifth Transformers series entry sees Optimus Prime corrupted by his alien creator and pressed into service to drain Earth’s energy to restore the dead Transformer planet of Cybertron. Meanwhile, Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) and the Autobots search the Earth for the artefacts Merlin and King Arthur were given by the Transformers to defend the planet centuries ago.

With the minor achievement of being both overlong and rushed whenever it tries to explain anything, The Last Knight is quite a painful sit.

There’s a load of vague nonsense exposition to tell us why Arthurian characters are part of this world, these coming in the form another secret society who protected the secret of the Transformers and numerous recycled plot elements from the previous movies (not picking up loose plot threads, recycling them wholesale). Then, Optimus Prime goes evil for about five minutes, and it turns out that because Mark Wahlberg comes from a legendary bloodline he can wield a sword the size of a bus.

At least Anthony Hopkins is on hand to remind us that WWII was a thing that happened, and apparently Bumblebee took part and fought the Nazis.

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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Screenwriters: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham
Starring: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Jake Johnson, Issa Rae, Bryan Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez

After four long years, the sequel to the “electric, atmospheric festival of colour” that was Sony Pictures Animation’s Oscar-winning, genre-defining, form-shaping Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has arrived. The film that fought against a tried and tested formula, that rewrote the lore of a studio staple, that was so fresh and interesting it was almost as if it should have never existed, was such a critical success that perennial safety shooters Sony were willing to experiment once again. This time, Miles Morales and company, under the stewardship of original co-writers and producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, are rewriting even more of the rule book.

Shameik Moore’s cool and relatable hero is introduced to a wider spider-verse by Hailee Steinfeld’s returning Gwen Stacy, who takes on a more central and well-rounded role in this highly-anticipated sequel. The heroine uses portal devices to cross between a multi-verse of spider-people as she and Miles experience grave family struggles. The concept of the multiverse may have been overplayed in recent years, but so rarely has it seemed this original, dynamic and brimming with life, and only in Into the Spider-Verse have the personal stakes been this high.

There are spider-people and spider-creatures galore, the cameos and more influential inclusions each being illuminated by an array of animation styles, a cornucopia of unique audio-visual elements. There are eye-widening design choices and smile-inducing casting choices, and every promise Sony’s marketing department offered in Across the Spider-Verse’s trailer is spectacularly realised.

Across the Spider-Verse is the longest animated feature in history at 2 hours and 20 minutes, but it leaves barely a moment to blink, the rapid and ever-original action slowing only to propel moments of inner conflict, interpersonal dynamics or existentialism to the forefront. Every central character is well taken care of, the beating heart that made the original so comforting and charismatic still intact – every development in Across the Spider-Verse feels at one with the film that came before. This is more than a good sequel that ramps up all that we enjoyed about the original, it is a reach into an unknown pool of perfection, a ginormous studio-backed swing at something special.

This version of Spider-Man has undergone one of the more trying coming-of-age tales of the feature film spider-people we’ve seen across various live-action franchises to date, and the connection this has forged between us and him ensures that each of his potentially multiverse-altering choices is felt from the off. Lord and Miller, who worked on the original Spider-Verse and fellow Sony Pictures Animation film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, have always given a lot of room for character choices in their texts. And, in a world of so many moving parts – characters, narratives, themes, animation styles – it is testament to their commitment to character choice that Across the Spider-Verse manages to capture the same connection as the original.

There is a short period in the middle of the film where the narrative sags a little, and certainly more could have been done to develop one of the film’s two central villains and the extent of their powers in the first half of the film – where we are left guessing as to just how much of a threat this character could be and what this might mean for Miles and Gwen – but these pitfalls are barely noticeable among the pantheon of extraordinary efforts made to excite and ignite our imaginations. In these moments, comedy, cameos, references and soundtrack take the lead, each expressively exploding out of the animation.

As an animated film, there are few contemporaries. Not since Toy Story rewrote animated feature history in the mid-90s had mainstream western animation been evolved and shunted forward with such force as in Into the Spider-Verse, and Across the Spider-Verse is somehow even more eccentric. Whether it be minutes of black and white sequences, pen lines and all, or watercolour constructions that change colour to match the conflict apparent in the dialogue, Across the Spider-Verse is an Oscar-winning short film’s unique and ultra-expressionistic sensibility attached to a mainstream intellectual property and presented by over 1,000 of the world’s best animators. It’s wondrous stuff, the kind of style that is worthy of the film’s dream-factory concept.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is why people go to the cinema. It is why you should go to the cinema. It is a phenomenon of style and substance that begs to be seen on the big screen. Lord and Miller, and their partners at Sony Pictures Animation, have once again captured lightning in a bottle. Across the Spider-Verse is ultra modern storytelling that captures the personality, fears and ambitions of our current era – it is eye-popping spectacle and hearty, moving passion side-by-side. As a sequel, we must consider this among the pantheon of greats that Spider-Man 2 (2004) belongs to, and as an animated film this is a certified all-timer. There’s no doubt that you’ll be left wanting more, but as things are… Spider-Man doesn’t get better than this.

Score: 22/24

Recommended for you: Spider-Man Movies Ranked

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman
Screenwriter: Phil Lord
Starring: Shameik Moore, Chris Pine, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, Zoe Kravitz, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, Kathryn Hahn, Liev Schreiber

Sony Pictures Animation’s hotly anticipated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse promised to take the idea of cross-dimensional travel and superhero team ups to the next level through a brand new animation style filled with vibrancy and life. Oh boy did they deliver.

Into the Spider-Verse is simply an unforgettable animated movie experience, a soft opening drip-feeding the less usual elements of its original visual style and potentially complicated central story arc in a way that was easy to digest, the impactful, exciting and often moving narrative beats consequently hitting you like a rush of blood to the head, the aesthetic wonderment of the film’s comic-book-inspired visuals pulsating from the screen and screaming “look at how cool this is!”

This animated feature is simply bursting with life, every frame filled with colour and an energy to its motion, its youthful exuberance right on the pulse of youth culture from the ideals and concerns of its central character to the fashions and technology used by the cast, right through to the pulsating beat of the soundtrack.

And it’s layered too…

Into the Spider-Verse relies upon some pre-existing knowledge of the Spider-Man universe, sure, and the joyful experience is bound to be increased if you’re at least somewhat familiar with the character, but it offers enough uniquely comic book style explanations to get itself through what would usually be tedious expository dialogue, and ultimately offers a cast made up of some truly fleshed out characters and one of the best central protagonists in any superhero movie ever – Miles Morales is someone you can’t help but want to see succeed. It’s a feeling emphasised by the piece’s unusual take on an origin movie – that being an inter-dimensional team-up of sorts – that (alongside the fantastic and original animation) distracts from some of the movie’s more clear-cut tropes and cliches, creating the feeling of an entirely fresh and distinct piece of work in every aspect.

It is for this reason that Into the Spider-Verse becomes transcendent of what it could have easily fallen into the trap of being: a superhero movie for comic book superhero fans. It simply screams too loudly and holds too tightly to be relegated to such a position; a truly fantastic achievement.

Visually, the team at Sony Pictures Animation have achieved something extraordinary, their new technologies taking the comic book visual form and firmly stamping it into the mainstream cinema experience. The film is awash with colour and an almost palpable electricity as a result, every single frame rendered with some of the most beautiful and striking visuals in any film this year. It’s in this respect that Into the Spider-Verse is really sent over the edge as an overall movie; the visual construction wrapping an otherwise solid picture in something so spectacular and original that it is absolutely monumental, and will guarantee that audiences (if not the industry itself) will look back upon this film as a game-changer and history maker of our time.

This electric, atmospheric festival of colour is simply fantastic; a memorable and hearty superhero film with a revolutionary take on its own medium, a treasure of this year in cinema and absolutely the very best in Sony Pictures Animation’s studio history. This may even be the best superhero film of 2018.

21/24

The 40-year-old professional wrestler turned actor was recently quoted as saying that his role in the WWE was coming to an end, with his recent television and film appearances being clear indicators as to where he wishes to take his career following life between the ropes. Currently on the big screen in Doug Liman’s The Wall, co-starring Golden Globe-winner Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who was announced for Netflix’s Outlaw King last week), Bumblebee becomes the latest in a spate of announcements regarding Cena’s casting on a number of high profile productions set to be released in the coming years.

The Bumblebee spin-off will be set in the 1980s as Paramount looks to capitalise on recent popular pieces set in the time period, such as Netflix’s original show ‘Stranger Things’, and will star a plethora of youthful talent headlined by Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit; The Edge of Seventeen; Pitch Perfect 2).

It is not yet known which central character John Cena will personify, but the film has already been announced to be being written by Shut In screenwriter Christina Hodson and will be directed by Laika Animation lead and Kubo and the Two Strings director Travis Knight.

The Transformers IP is a multi-billion dollar film franchise for Paramount Pictures and one of the world’s best-selling merchandise movers, but with regular director Michael Bay (Armageddon) exiting the project, Bumblebee will be the first in the live-action line-up to not centre on the war between the autobots and decepticons, and will be the first to feature a period setting.

The Bumblebee movie will be released on December 21st 2018, the same weekend as DC/Warner Bros movie Aquaman starring Jason Momoa.

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Pitch Perfect 1 was one of the five movies I selected as being surprisingly excellent in the list I posted last week, so when the opportunity to sit down and watch Pitch Perfect 2 was thrown my way, I grabbed it with both hands and awaited yet more comedy gold from the world’s favourite A cappella group.

Almost instantly my expectations were lowered by the vast amount of children that had taken their seats in the cinema to reveal to me that Pitch Perfect 2 was a 12A (PG13) – I really should’ve caught this in my research, admittedly. Why the decision was made to give the sequel a lower age rating is simple… money. However, it seemingly makes very little sense otherwise. After all, the vast amounts of kids I shared my screening with surely didn’t see the first one in cinemas given its 15 rating, and if the law is anything to go by they shouldn’t have seen the first one at all, right? Furthermore, Pitch Perfect is a college comedy, something completely out of the realm of understanding to anyone under an appropriate age. I don’t wish to preach to you about age ratings as I’m a fairly liberal person and believe that it’s each to their own in this regard, but my expectations of the level of humour was significantly lowered given the knowledge that this movie was now also available to children. In many ways I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this was, mostly, not the case at all – whether the parents in attendance would have thought the same thing is another question entirely.

Pitch Perfect 2’s entire premise centers around the disgrace placed on the Barden Bellas by A capella enthusiasts when Fat Amy accidentally reveals her nether regions to the watching public at the national college finals, and journeys with them on their road back to the top of the A cappella game, all in the same classically tongue in cheek way that we’d become accustomed to in the first movie. One large part of the success of this portrayal is due to the sarcastic commentary team who break up scenes in much the same way that Statler and Waldorf do in The Muppets, and both Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins are once again on form with their excellent delivery of some truly laugh-out-loud one liners. However, much unlike the original, the idea of an A cappella group competing nationally/internationally being a ridiculous concept (in many ways) is absent and Anna Kendrick’s character Beca feeds into that now that she’s embraced the process after her experiences in the first movie. It’s a huge miss to the comedy of Elizabeth Banks’s film but one that Rebel Wilson does her upmost to make up for.

Rebel Wilson’s Fat Amy is without a doubt the standout of Pitch Perfect 2. In many respects it is her journey that this film follows the most, with Beca’s presence in the movie lessening in this picture, and this is a huge positive with regard to the quality of the movie because Wilson’s contributions are simply hilarious and often typically sexual despite the lowered age rating. Hailee Steinfeld’s introduction as Emily was welcomed as a new dynamic because of her younger and fan-girl-representing role too, but it’d be hard to argue against the fact that she is used as little more than a plot device to help complete Beca’s story and set up an inevitable third movie. The best addition to the Pitch Perfect universe this time out was almost undoubtedly Keegan-Michael Key as Beca’s new boss. Key was seemingly effortless in his comedic delivery and was written in such a way that the actor’s personality was able to shine beyond his somewhat small role. His character’s introduction, as well as the introduction of various comedians, musicians and even sports stars in the smaller roles, added that “oh, it’s that person” intrigue which is normally somewhat inexcusable but was entirely suitable for the tongue-in-cheek and almost parody-like tone of the movie which, as I mentioned before, was somewhat lacking in other areas.

Generally speaking, Pitch Perfect 2’s visual style is almost indistinguishable from the original despite the change in directors, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the work in this regard simply needs to be efficient and appropriately edited to maintain comedic value and the general structure of other films in the genre. As is typical of a sequel however, there has been a notable increase in the scale of the production which has grown considerably since the original, the credit of the organisation of which must go to the first-time feature director Elizabeth Banks.

Conclusively, Pitch Perfect 2 is by no means a poor sequel despite the age rating, and should certainly be considered as a worthy follow up to one of the best comedies of the decade (at least in my opinion). Though it misses Beca’s commentary on the outrageous nature a movie about A cappella, something that can’t be covered by the intriguing casting additions and cameos, it still hits a number of key notes and is a generally funny and interesting movie that is a must-watch for any Pitch Perfect fan and worth an intriguing glimpse for those who are not.

Not as good as it gets, but still a good addition to the genre…

15/24