Last year, Illumination Entertainment released two movies.

Both met mediocre reviews. Both saw mediocre to good box office returns.

But which mediocre film is superior? That's the entirely pointless question that I aim to answer with this review.

So get ready for a Jim Review double feature, folks.

It's animal comedy vs. anthropomorphic musical.

It's comedians voicing domesticated animals vs. famous actors singing as anthropomorphic animals.

It's The Secret Life of Pets vs. Sing.

THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS:

This movie is......hard to describe.

Overall, the experience is....perfectly ok, but just why this movie falls flat into the realm of mediocre is incredibly difficult to put into words.

On the one hand, it does have its comedic moments. There are jokes that work, and even some that work well. I found myself laughing out loud on one or more occasion.

But on the other hand, there are jokes that don't. And the plot is just a trainwreck of random whatevers happening and doesn't make sense half the time. And for some reason Kevin Hart is a bunny.

The Secret Life of Pets' main strength is in its jokes. It is after all, mainly a comedy. However, it's no secret (pun unfortunately entirely intended) that comedies live and die off their jokes. And with a movie whose jokes range from duds to only a handful of successes, you find yourself just looking at the screen in either bewilderment or utter speechlessness.

The plot is also entirely unfocused and nonsensical. The main focus of the movie (I think) is on the relationship dynamics between Max (voiced by Louis CK) and Duke (voiced by Eric Stonestreet). In the first five minutes or so, Max is a bit of a jerk to Duke, but Duke remains relatively optimistic about his new home. Then seemingly out of nowhere, Duke flips on a dime and starts giving Max a ton of crap. Deserved maybe, but the first few minutes had just established Duke as a pretty easygoing dog. Thus the audience gets confused and muddled by the mixed messages the film is giving about its characters.

I haven't even mentioned Kevin Hart yet.

He voices a bunny who hates humans and is, and I swear I'm not making this up, the leader of an underground animal revolution against humans and seeks their downfall.

You think something like that would get a little more screentime, but no, there's also another dog that's obsessed with Max for some strange reason (she loves him, but, the movie gives no real reason why), a hawk who is about to eat the girl dog but then doesn't and agrees to help because she says she'll be his best friend (I don't even know), a dog who's paralyzed and hits on the cat, other dogs, a gerbil, and on and on and if this sentence was confusing, random, and an unorganized trainwreck to you then you've basically experienced how I felt watching this movie.

Unfortunately for you I'm not funny and can't relieve the confusion with some jokes.

The plot is all over the place, and it's not helped by the random dream sequences, yelling and screaming, wanton violence, and crap ton of characters.

Basically, The Secret Life of Pets is a dumb action movie for kids. The plot is nonexistent, the characters are barely memorable and one-note, and there's tons of things happening for no good reason. And a couple decent jokes. And of course, lots of fighting.

But mostly, there's just confusion.

SING:

I really wanted this movie to be a hit.

I had kind of signed off from The Secret Life of Pets from the start. Although I ended up enjoying parts of it, I still wasn't expecting much from it.

However, when the trailers for Sing dropped, I was definitely interested. A feel-good jukebox musical with a star-studded cast of seemingly interesting and likable characters? Sign me up.

Turned out I was only part-right.

Sing has many things going for it. The jokes are actually pretty good. One thing it and The Secret Life of Pets have in common is an abundance of dark humor. Heck, Sing's jokes are actually more consistent than The Secret Life of Pets' for the most part.

The characters are also really likable, albeit not as fleshed out as I would have liked. Their struggles are sympathetic and in some ways relatable. You have a desire for them to succeed because you find yourself caring about who they are and what they can become.

The singing in Sing is also really good. Given the lineup of actors and actresses signed on, I was surprised how many of them could sing really well (unless they were dubbed). I enjoyed most of the song choices, and the cast actually impressed me with how well they covered each song.

....when they actually sang.

Sing's main downfall is its plot. All of its characters are likable, yet the film struggles to tell all of their stories in addition to the main one.

Now multiple storyline plots can work, they just have to be fleshed out enough through the characters and their motivations. Sing fails to do this, most notably through its (most likely) main plot with the koala Buster Moon, voiced by Matthew McConaughey. His theater is not bringing in visitors, and so he throws a singing competition together in order to compile a list of performers together for one epic show.

The competition, however, isn't the main focus of the film. It's the preparation for the big show. Buster does promise whoever he thinks is the best of those performers will receive the prize money, but that's pretty much all that's mentioned about it. Considering that the trailers were kind of built around the competition and the characters within it, this seems like a story choice that makes no sense. Why not let the thrill of the competition drive the plot?

Also, many plot points that seem major when introduced get glossed over or have incredibly minor and random solutions that solve the problem either without real consequence or no effort on the part of the character. For example, through a mix-up, instead of the prize for winning being a thousand dollars, the flyers display the prize to be a HUNDRED thousand dollars. When Buster Moon realizes this after he's assembled his lineup for the show, he tries to cover it up. After he's exposed, his theater gets destroyed due to an accident, and he gets really depressed. The aforementioned group of performers then come to his house to try to cheer him up, SEEMINGLY COMPLETELY OKAY WITH BEING LIED TO ABOUT GETTING A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. One character has a beef with that and quits only to return later, but that's it.

This was obviously done so that the plot could move along to fit in the other characters' plots, and that pretty much right there is the main reason the plot falls a little flat. The film isn't built around handling multiple plot threads because it doesn't let its competition drive the plot, and thus to compensate, must create simple and streamlined solutions so that the plot doesn't get bogged down with plot holes.

And like I mentioned before, for a movie called Sing, it really doesn't have a lot of singing.

Calling Sing a jukebox musical is incorrect, as there are no real musical numbers, just characters that cover songs. And they really don't do this that often, which is a real shame.

You hear them audition and rehearse, so you get to hear a portion of a song, but not until the end except for the very beginning do you get to hear an actual full song.

Like I said before, the singing is really excellent, so it's a real shame they don't get to do it more often.

The most likely reason for this is the overstuffed plot. There's no room to sing because every character's threads and subplots (yes each character's story arc has subplots) need time to resolve.

But despite those flaws, Sing does have character, humor, and charm. So that does make the overall viewing experience quite enjoyable. If it wasn't for these flaws, Sing would be untouchable.

SO WHO WINS?

To answer this question, I had to answer two questions for myself.

First, whose plot was put together better?

The answer to that one was easy. Sing.

Despite being overstuffed and streamlined for simplicity, Sing's plot is driven by elements, albeit weak elements. There were points where I questioned why a character did something, but for no major plot thread did I think events were happening for no good reason.

The Secret Life of Pets' plot is a trainwreck of insanity that really you have to turn your brain off to get through without losing it. Events happen for no reason and characters do things with no visible motivation.

But the main question I had to answer for myself was this: which film do I think deserves a second viewing and is worthy of coming back to?

And for being worthy of watching again, I have to give it to Sing.

I admit I went into Sing expecting a lot, and a lot of my initial reactions to Sing were due to these let down expectations.

Also, I really wanna analyze the plot a little more and see how maybe they could have shrunk the roles of some of the characters in order to truly resolve some of the bigger plot elements.

Also, it's a genuinely fun movie to watch with good singing, comedy, and characters. I'm still a little unsure as to whether or not I want to own it for myself, but I do want to see it again.

So overall, Sing wins because it has the better plot and characters, and is overall a more enjoyable experience.

As for Illumination, let's hope Despicable Me 3 is as good as its trailer looks.