Sing

An animated karaoke movie, featuring an impressive cast and plenty of catchy cover songs, Sing is ultimately nothing special and fairly forgettable.  Younger viewers (especially those not already familiar with the original songs) may find more to enjoy though.

Premise:  Koala Buster Moon (voiced by Matthew McConaughey) stages a singing competition to try and save his failing theatre, but a typo on the advert announces that the first prize is $100,000 instead of £1,000, and soon the whole city is auditioning.

Review:

I feel a bit stingy being so hard on this film, but unlike some other family friendly animations, I felt that this one really didn’t offer much for the adult viewers.  The plot really is as straightforward and unoriginal as a theatre owner putting on an “X-Factor” style singing competition, and the characters are all fairly familiar archetypes – the young male (Taron Egerton) who’s more interested in singing than in “manly” pastimes, much to the dismay of his father; the mother and housewife (Reese Witherspoon) who’s given up on her dreams of stardom; the rebellious teenage girl (Scarlett Johansson) who wants to be taken seriously; and the amazingly talented singer (Tori Kelly) who suffers from stage fright.

Another thing that irritated me about Sing is that it’s set in a world of anthropomorphised animals, but it does nothing with the concept, nor is there any reason for it to have been set in a world of talking animals.  Last year’s Zootropolis, for example, used the relationships between different species of animals as a metaphor for racism and intolerance, and used the physical differences between the animals for countless background sight gags.  Sing, on the other hand, doesn’t do anything with the concept – leaving me with the impression that the film is set in a world of talking animals simply because that’s an easier (and lazier) “sell” to children.  The truth is, you could have set Sing in the real world with live-action actors, and you wouldn’t have had to change a single plot thread.

“…I’m probably not the target audience – but it appeals to younger viewers…”

If you’re a fan of “X-Factor” style singing competitions, then maybe you’ll get a bit more out of this film than I did (I personally really dislike those kind of “karaoke” singing shows).  That said, even I have to confess that a lot of the covers in Sing were toe-tappingly catchy, but for me, that’s not enough to carry a film.

But look, I appreciate that I’m probably not the target audience for the film, and in fairness, both my 3-year-old and my 7-year-old really enjoyed it – so for that reason, I felt Sing warranted a 3-star rating based on its appeal to younger viewers, despite the fact that it didn’t connect with me personally.  And given that it’s made over $600m worldwide against a budget of $75m, it’s unquestionably been a success, with a sequel now scheduled for 2020.  Maybe next time they’ll make something that’s more than just two hours of animated animal karaoke … but I won’t hold my breath.