'Sing' Review

I had the chance to catch Sing about a month early on November 26th for a promotional Sing Saturday event but decided to refrain from posting the review so that my readers would have my thoughts on the feature fresh in their minds before or after they see it.

'Sing' Review

In the world of Sing, animals coexist in a utopian society, think dumbed down Zootopia, and koala theater owner Buster Moon is facing the potential foreclosure of his grand establishment so Moon decides to put on a singing competition in hopes of saving his theater. The prize reward is accidentally advertised as $100,000 that Moon doesn't possess and the film follows the succeeding shenanigans.

For all intensive purposes it's like all televised singing competitions; The Voice America's Got Talent, or American Idol, but with animals. As amusing as it is to watch animals sing, it gets old fast as it's difficult to stay engaged when there's little story present and the film relies almost entirely on the spectacle of singing animals. Also almost every "surprise" or moment of interest was shown in the film's marketing material so you can't help but feel that you've seen the movie already if you've watched one of the trailers. There are admittedly moments of fun, where I laughed hysterically, but those are too far and few between to make up for the lackluster predictable story.

Writer and director Garth Jennings alongside co-director Chrisophe Lourdelet manage to develop interesting concepts but don't ever fully flesh them out. Jennings' screenplay is constantly trying to shoehorn emotional character arcs into the story but when there's so many characters for the story to follow, these arcs can't help but feel lost on the viewer. Lourdelet amasses an interesting bunch of creatures but fails to properly service any of them since he's constantly switching gears, which is really a shame considering the voice talent involved.

On that note the film features Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson, John C. Reilly, Tori Kelly, Taron Egerton, Nick Kroll, and the director himself voicing the exuberant koala, stay at home mother pig, mob mouse, apprehensive porcupine, lazy llama, shy elephant, gorilla reluctant to join the family gang, flamboyant dancing pig, and the clumsy lizard assistant respectively. It's great to hear these stars sing jukebox hits but the lack of any noteworthy or original music makes Sing feel run of the mill, there's so many songs that I won't bother listing any and am simultaneously wondering how much of the film's budget went towards acquiring the rights to all this music. Also, the animation in Sing looked fine but was nothing compared to superior animated efforts this year like Zootopia, Finding Dory, or Moana for starters. 

Overall, Sing is sufficient family entertainment but Illumination Entertainment doesn't dare to traverse the emotional depth or sophistication that Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, or Dreamworks Animation often explore. Illumination appears to be a studio that's capable of churning out mediocre family-friendly content that children adore, leading to big box office returns and the development of even more animated projects from the studio. Illumination's biggest problem is that it plays everything too safe, leading to formulaic features that spread themselves thin with abundant characters and storylines and no means of servicing them all.

When it comes down to it, Sing finds itself in the same rut that plagued Illumination's other release this year, The Secret Life Of Pets, and when placed next to the other animated releases this year it will probably be justly forgotten.

Film Assessment: C-