For the past several years, American television has been dominated by reality competition shows. There are too many of them to count - we’ve got game shows, survivalist challenges, cooking shows, dating shows and sports related contests. But by far the most popular type is the talent-based show. More specifically, singing competitions. America’s Got Talent, American Idol, The X Factor, and The Voice are only a handful of shows that offer everyday people the chance to become the next big superstar. Although they’ve become staples of TV culture, I have the feeling that people are getting fatigued. So when I heard about Universal Pictures’s newest animated film, “Sing,” a movie about a singing competition, I was a little apprehensive.
Directed by Christophe Loudelet, “Sing” is about an optimistic koala named Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) who’s struggling to keep his theater afloat. Finances are draining, the building is crumbling and Moon is quickly running out of options. So he figures that the only way to save his theater is to host a singing competition and offer an ample cash prize. Among the contestants are Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), a stay-at-home mother with 25 piglets; Mike (Seth McFarlane), an arrogant mouse; Ash (Scarlet Johansson), a punk-rock porcupine; Meena (Tori Kelly), an elephant with paralyzing stage-fright; and Johnny (Taron Egerton), a gorilla struggling to fit in with his gangster family.
On one hand, this movie feels like an excuse to see the animals from “Zootopia” sing karaoke with songs from a Top 40 best hits playlist you’d hear on the radio. At the same time, however, it’s an excuse with decent effort put into it. The animation is very well-done. It’s colorful, it’s fun to watch and the characters are enjoyably expressive. For such a star-studded cast with clearly distinguishable voices, you’d think the voice-acting would feel forced or distracting. Thankfully, the vocals matched the personalities of the characters (especially McFarlane as the mouse). Not the most complex or memorable, but fun to watch. There’s no reason for them to be animals - you could’ve easy told the story with humans and nothing would change - but they’re cute.
The screenplay, written by Garth Jennings, does a decent job at keeping it entertaining from start to finish. Some parts are slower than others for sure, but it’s nowhere near boring. With that being said, the story doesn’t have a tight structure. The first and final acts are pretty solid, but the middle is where it feels scattered. The film tries to juggle multiple storylines of different characters, so the focus is all over the place. Things happen just for the sake of happening. Introductions to the characters feel rushed, as though the film was trying to skip ahead to the musical scenes. Some of their storylines aren’t really even resolved in the end, they just stop.
The most disappointing part of the movie is its surprising lack of humor. The movie is not trying to be a gut-busting comedy, but the majority of the jokes don’t hit as hard as you’d expect. There are some laugh-out-loud moments, but for the most part, I found myself smirking more than laughing.
Nonetheless, “Sing” is a perfectly fine family film with good music and pretty animation. It’s cute. Not bad, not great, just cute. There’s enough to the story to entertain both children and adults. It’s not an extravaganza, but it’s a fun film that I recommend.
