Pitch Pretty Good 2

If you liked the first movie, you'll probably love this movie, unless you're a member of the LGBT community. Then there might be some parts where you could make them better by covering your ears and singing, "La la la I can't hear you! La la la..."

Heck, I loved most of this movie. While the first movie had dragging issues in its pacing, the sequel was nonstop with very few lulls. I liked that there wasn't as much drama as the first, and although the jokes weren't stale, one joke in particular fell flat. While most people won't care, it just isn't ok to joke about Ladyboys and to insinuate that John Michael Kay's character would be sexually involved with them is even more ignorant, and by referring to them as boys/men makes it even worse. The running gag with Kay's character of constant implications that he not only hates women but is homosexual should preclude him from any sexually charged interactions with someone who for all intents and purposes was female. It's a groaner joke and it doesn't belong anywhere in any movie. Still, it would have been just a joke in poor taste if only Elizabeth Banks' character had used female pronouns.

Q: But Katie, why would female pronouns make a tasteless joke about a marginalized community ok?

Legitimacy. From every corner of the world, transfolk are constantly being told they aren't real men or women. It doesn't matter how far into transition they are or if they even do decide to transition, or if they have had any surgery done, once a person is living as their identified gender it wouldn't hurt cisgender people to just call us by our preferred pronouns and names.

In this feel good female driven comedy, all it took was one joke to make me uncomfortable and upset. If a movie is a conversation between an audience and the film makers, that joke was the sign that I'm not invited. The target audience is women. And I'm sick and tired of the old transphobic idea of "womyn born womyn," created by trans-exclusionary radical feminists.

It's rather regressive to imply that gay men are drawn to trans women. It doesn't make sense and is really annoying/insulting. The most common way straight guys have rejected me after I told them I'm trans is, "I'm not gay." Causing me to sigh and respond, "Good! Because all the gay guys I know aren't attracted to me, because they're gay and I look, act, feel and speak like a woman..." Someday I hope to find a bisexual man who can't give me that bs response to my disclosure.

A minor point of contention for me is that the lesbians I know aren't that into straight women. The whole attempting conversion thing isn't a thing as far as I know. Ester Dean's character, Cynthia Rose, is a missed chance to show a lesbian woman as an actualized person rather than a 2D characature of one. I guess in general the Pitch Perfect movies are kinda clueless when it comes to LGBT stuff.

Still, I liked the movie, and I wouldn't support a boycott. If you love singing or acapella, go watch it. It feels a lot like the inverted formula of a guys sports-team comedy, where the fleshed out male characters are only there to date the leading women. It could have been better, but it's still an enjoyable movie. I can only hope the third installment will be a bit more enlightened and forward thinking...

For a more in depth review mentioning many of the same issues: http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/68658/pitch-perfect-2/