Sing Review

Sing follows Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey), a Koala that loves theater and was able to purchase one after his father saved for his entire life. It opens up with a look at the theater of old and then jumps to the present time in this universe where things have gone bad and the entire building is crumbling. It's both a look at funny aspects of him trying to keep it from falling apart and generally the theater in how it's faded away over time.

From there it completely abandons any sense of deeper meaning for a movie where they just basically strung together a series of popular songs with a variety of animated animals singing to them. The premise is that with the failing building, a desperate Moon creates a singing competition that attracts a ton of attention from the city only to realize that things might not have come together as initially planned due to a small mistype from his ancient secretary.

There's a vast amount of characters present in the film filling many different types of roles and the movie gives small glimpses into the lives of each of them. The voices were lovely in the film with many recognizable stars taking roles as various animals and there's your typical story as well thrown into the mix about believing in yourself.

The animation was once again great from Illumination though much smaller in scope in comparison to The Secret Life of Pets. I found there to be a bit too many cliché moments throughout the film and a number of the comedic elements did fall flat.

The car wash scene and the mouse battling the air had to be my favorite portions along with some of the minor mishaps in repairing the theater. There were some odd storylines that were left open in the film and some definite continuity errors I noticed that stuck out a bit.

The movie also felt far too long becoming uncomfortable after awhile and I don't recall a movie being like that recently. Perhaps I'm not exactly the target audience, but it was difficult to sit through and about two thirds in this was clearly evident.

The Conclusion

It's a decent animated film and about what you'd expect from Illumination at this point in the form of a musical. It's got a wide selection of popular songs with mostly modern tracks taking center so the younger audience will definitely enjoy that aspect.

It does have some smaller aspects that came together well though it did not hit all the comedic lines and the theater was rather quiet for most of the movie. Sing was an average film with a somewhat different format than I anticipated, but filled with many cliché moments and was too long.

Sing Review at Theater with Standard Viewing
Screening Provided by NBC Universal

Rating Overall: 6.0