I watched Illumination Entertainment’s Sing on Wednesday and I couldn’t decide if it was worth a review or not. So naturally here I am on Christmas writing a review for it even though I expect this article will not be a heavily trafficked one. It tells the story of a Koala, voiced by Matthew McConaughey, that is trying to put together a singing competition to try to gain enough interest and revenue to save his theater. I am going to be fairly short and sweet with this review as it was a pretty simple movie and not really worth dissecting too intensely.
The Bad
Sing is obviously a kids movie, and as a guy who usually loves kids movies and animation of all kinds, I was a bit disappointed with the sad attempts of this movie to create drama. I think it would’ve been a lot better if it would’ve focused more on the singing contest and less on the drama of each character’s life. It was great to see it all work out for all the characters in the end, but it was just so many different stories going on at the same time and I really didn’t care about most of them. The other movies previously released by Illumination have been successful because they were playful, light, and funny. Sing should’ve stuck to that template but instead it tried a little to hard to create unnecessary drama.
At times Illumination is known to stoop down to a really immature level to try to get laughs out of kids. That was on display again at a couple points in this film. Most notably was during the tryouts for the singing contest when a wildebeest just starts farting out of control for a while. They were plenty of little kids in the theater who found that hilarious but obviously most of the older audience will find it crude and unnecessary. It is just a stupid way to get laughs in my opinion and it is dumb gimmicks like that which keep Illumination Entertainment from joining Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks at the big boy table of animation. Overall, I really didn’t laugh very often during Sing. There were a few chuckle moments but other than that, it just wasn’t overly clever.
The Good
The voice cast in this film is absolutely loaded with big names. I already mentioned McConaughey as Buster Moon, but some other recognizable names include: Scarlett Johansson as Ash, Taron Egerton as Johnny, Reese Witherspoon as Rosita, Seth MacFarlane as Mike, John C. Reilly as Eddie, and one of my favorite vocalists Tori Kelly as Meena. There are even 3 or 4 other names that I didn’t even mention that I am sure you would recognize. It was definitely fun to have all those familiar voices involved with the film and even hear some sing that don’t normally show off their singing voices doing their typical roles.
The music in this movie was good for the most part. The tryout scene was pretty chaotic as they skipped from act to act every couple of seconds and you didn’t get to hear much of any particular song during that period. But the last concert is very good and definitely makes up for it. In fact, I think that the movie did a good job at not revealing very much of each singing act during the rehearsal stages of the movie in order to save it for the big finish.
The Rating
There were some cute and funny moments as well as some dumb and bland moments scattered throughout the movie Sing. Overall, I would call sing kind of a “meh” movie and would say it’s probably not worth going to theaters to see unless you are with a young child that is just dying to see it. Wait till it comes out and then, if you have absolutely nothing else to do, go ahead and give it a watch.
3/5
I want to wish Merry Christmas to all my friends family or anyone who has read my movie blog since launching it at the beginning of 2016. It has been a good year in movies and I expect an even bigger one next year!
Perry The Cinema Psycho 