The first Pitch Perfect movie came out three years ago, and kind of took people by surprise. It was a word-of-mouth success. I’ve heard from lots of people who had the same reaction my wife and I did; we weren’t much interested, but so many friends recommended it, we decided to give it a chance. And were blown away. It was a movie of gross-out humor, exuberant energy, and lots of terrific a cappella music. I didn’t even know that national a cappella pop music competitions were a thing, though I did know that lots of local a cappella groups were popping up in and around Provo. And we’re big fans of Pentatonix, and were thrilled to see that quintet make a too-brief cameo appearance in the second movie. The sequel has the same energy and sense of fun the first one did, and the music is every bit as delightful. It is, however, a subtly different movie than the first one, and I think, is a stronger film, a little more sure of itself. Here’s why I say this: the movies are very similar, but the first one was, frankly, pretty much a rom-com. This one isn’t. I found it kind of confidently and surprisingly Bechdel-test-friendly, and really liked it for that reason.

Both movies are essentially structured the same. In both films, the all-female a cappella group, the Barden College Bellas, compete in formal singing competitions. The films are structured, frankly, like sports films; we meet the members of the team, see them work through personal and team issues relating to their ability to compete, culminating in a final high-stakes game/match/contest. Which, SPOILER, they win. I mean, come on; we’ve seen hundreds of these things; the good guys always win, right? The journey’s the point.

There is this difference, though. In the first film, one of the main conflicts involves Beca (Anna Kendrick), a gifted music arranger and singer, but not really a Bella type. She’s not sweetly feminine; she’s alt-indie chick. And she meets a guy, Jesse (Skylar Astin) the lead singer for a rival a cappella group, and their romance is beset by competition-related vicissitudes. Both the romance and the competition come together at the end, when she includes “Don’t you forget about me” from The Breakfast Club (his favorite movie) in the Bellas’ final set. The Bellas win, and Beca gets her man.

Here’s the difference. Jesse’s still a character in Pitch Perfect 2, which is set three years after the earlier movie. He and Beca are still together. That’s it; there’s no conflict involving them. They’re a couple now; it’s all good. The conflict now is that Beca is getting worried about what she’s going to do when she graduates from college. The Bellas are, after all, an extra-curricular activity for her. She’s going to need to get along with her life. She wants to become a music producer, and has landed an internship as a crucial step towards that goal. Her boss is a big deal producer-type (amusingly played by Keegan-Michael Key). (In one of the movie’s funniest scenes, they’re trying to record a track for a Snoop Dogg Christmas album–we get to hear Snoop sing “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”). And she has a bit of a break-through. There’s a new girl in the Bellas, Emily (Hailee Steinfeld), who writes music; Beca produces a song for her, and it’s good; a nice little pop song. Not great, but a song that might advance both their careers.

That relates to the main conflict of the film; what will the Bellas do when they graduate? What will these talented, intelligent young women make of their lives, and how will the spirit of sisterly comradeship they’ve developed as Bellas help them?  Chloe (Brittany Snow), the Bella’s leader, is terrified at the prospect. Aubrey (Anna Camp), a co-leader of the group in the last movie, has already made that transition. She runs a teamwork-building corporate-retreat outdoors camp for big business, and she’s, uh, amusingly forceful in that role. Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) is the only character who really gets much of a romantic relationship in the movie, and it’s very much a sub-plot. (Fat Amy, BTW, is the character’s listed name, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she’s the one who ends up with a boyfriend).

The first movie was directed by Jason Moore, and it employs the ‘big competition’ structure to essentially explore a romantic relationship. It defined its protagonist, Beca, romantically. This movie is directed by a woman, Elizabeth Banks, who turned it into a subversively funny feminist comedy. Banks also plays Gail, one of the two a cappella announcers who comment on the competitive action–her partner, John, was brilliantly played by John Michael Higgins. Gail and John are hilarious throughout in both films, but honestly, I thought they were meaner, and therefore funnier this time around. Higgins was spectacularly clueless, and Banks plays Gail as equally unaware, a sexist-pig-enabler, if you will. Anyway, I think it’s significant that a woman directed this movie. Banks is a smart, savvy actress, and she turns this slight, fun comedy into a feminist fable. It’s a movie about young women growing up, growing together, competing together, supporting each other. It’s a movie in which the romantic partners and romantic lives of women are basically irrelevant to the plot, subordinate to their professional aspirations and achievements. A movie in which young women embrace feminism with exuberant good cheer; what’s not to like?

Throughout the movie, of course, the music is terrifically sassy and energized and fun. The Bellas’ big rival is a German a cappella band that my wife and I ended up calling ‘The Hitler Youth.’ (Actually Das Sound Machine; even funnier). With their stage outfits straight from Kraftwerk, and their scary Teutonic discipline, I loved everything they did, most especially an a cappella arrangement of Muse’s hit, “Uprising.” Best of all, a scene in which a variety of goofy ensembles engage in a kind of improv battle of the a cappellas; funny, funny stuff.

The film’s inciting incident, the plot point that launches the main story, comes early on, when the Bellas give a command performance for, among others, President Obama. And Fat Amy, doing a kind of Cirque du Soleil dance wrapped in cloth, (to Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball”) gets all tangled up, and her skin-tight trousers split. And, to the horror of the crowd, she slowly rotates up there, and exposes her vagina. (We don’t see it; the story is told through reaction shots). The crowd’s reaction is appropriately over-the-top; basically everyone overreacts as though Amy had committed some kind of gross indecency. She didn’t. She had a wardrobe mishap, an accident. She flashed the President. Not the end of the world. Though that’s how it’s treated.

I’m sorry, but I think that crowd overreaction was intentional. I mean, imagine the same scene with a male actor. Let’s suppose a performer had a wardrobe malfunction in which he dropped his trousers, exposing his penis. I think the reaction would be amusement; some outrage, possibly, but not this kind of ‘it’s the end of the world’ hysteria. Maybe I’m reading feminist commentary into a simple comic stunt and plot point, but given the rest of the movie, I don’t think so. I think Elizabeth Banks is pointing to a specific kind of cultural anatomical hypocrisy. And power to her.

Anyway, my wife and I had a blast. What do you know? A movie about an all-female musical ensemble that ends up being about, well, women, and female achievement and solidarity and ambition, about talented young women finding their collective voice.