Singing, dancing, and acapella puns. It can only mean one thing — the Barden Bellas acappella group is back on the big screen once again in Pitch Perfect 2, the sequel to the famous Pitch Perfect, which had millions of young girls learning to sing a song while keeping the beat with a cup.

Pitch Perfect Two hit theaters opening weekend, raking in 70 million dollars, beating other highly anticipated films such as Mad Max. Directed by Elizabeth Banks, who also had a role in both films, showed the world that her female targeted comedic film, filled with a bit of romance and a whole lot of singing, is a success.

In the film, the Barden Bellas, who are now three time national acappella champs, are forced to compete at the World Competition in order to keep their group together after an embarrassing incident while performing for President Barack Obama.

Many of the main characters remain in the second movie, such as Beca, played by Anna Kendrick; Chloe, played by Brittany Snow, and the confident, Australian, and at times raunchy “Fat Amy” played by Rebel Wilson. There is also a newcomer to the Barden Bellas, Emily Junk, played by Hailee Steinfeld, who adds a slight twist to the entire movie by introducing the Bellas to the idea of singing original music.

However, despite the huge success of the first movie, the second movie seemed to falter. Throughout the film, it seemed as though the writers struggled to keep up with the humor of the first movie, and incorporated jokes where they weren’t needed and sometimes added ones that didn’t make sense at all.

Often times, the jokes fell on Fat Amy (Wilson), who although is one of the funniest characters in the group, seemed to always fall short of being funny with the humor feeling rather forced. It was very clear that the writers were relying on her to deliver the clever humor we saw in the first movie.

Anna Kendrick, who had the main role, was also completely overshadowed by the rather busy plot itself. Between the necessary emergence of Steinfeld’s character, as well as Kendrick’s character Beca taking a job, and then the Bellas competing against a fierce German acapella group, it was easy for Beca’s importance to get lost. With little character development from Kendrick’s character, the times we did see her she was often moody or distant, making you question if you were actually supposed to consider her the protagonist of the entire movie. Her flat performance gave the movie a dull mood, and the few times the writers decided to throw in a joke or two, Kendrick’s delivery was not funny, as well as awkward and borderline creepy at times.

Other characters such as Bumper, played by Adam Devine and Benji, played by Ben Platt, managed to salvage some of the humor that left the audience in silence, but even then their performances were dull. Bumper, who had played the antagonist in the previous movie, was now more a main character and gave a scene some funny spots here and there. Benji, the painfully awkward character, provided a bit of cheesy romance when he falls her Steinfeld’s character, something that just further put this movie in the vault titled “Cheesy and Cliche Sequels.”

Characters that seemed to come through the most were the commentators Gail and John, played by Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins, who had the funniest jokes and actually made people laugh. Another stand out character was Beca’s Boss, played by Keegan-Michael Key, who played a egotistic boss working in the music industry. Other popular faces featured in this movie which added some appeal were Snoop Dogg, Michelle and Barack Obama, and Clay Matthews with some of the other players from the Green Bay Packers, all making appearances as themselves.

The music that made this movie famous, which was a mash up of different songs sung entirely by different voices, began to get repetitive after awhile.

After the release of the first film, people were mesmerized by this new mix of harmonies put together without the use of instruments, as the teams jammed the current Top 10 hits from that year into one song. Now, the music sounded like the exact same songs in different tunes. Each song seemed to sound the same, and as much as I tried to enjoy the sound, I couldn’t help but yawn, thinking “I’ve seen this before.”

So did the second movie outshine the first? Nope. In fact, it was so dark it quite possibly dimmed the light of the first one. With a mixture of forced jokes, bad songs, and dull characters, it showed the world that if a movie is good, let’s not go running around trying to make a sequel that will be even better, because that will never happen.