Sing! Hits Plenty Of High Notes
Over the summer I saw a trailer for an animated movie about singing animals, and I scratched my head over the concept. I was very dismissive at first — what with American Idol just ending back in April, I was under the impression that it was just trying to ride on the coattails of the long-dead phenomena of music competition shows. However, I can’t recall a time when I was more happy to be proven wrong.
Sing! is about a world populated by anthropomorphic animals. A koala named Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) works to keep his theater from closing down. To this end, Buster and his sheep friend Eddie Noodleman (John C. Reilly) hold a singing contest to raise money, and the entire town auditions for a part in the show. The leading five are an overworked pig named Rosita (Reese Witherspoon) with her pig partner named Gunter (Nick Kroll), an arrogant and gambling white mouse named Mike (Seth MacFarlane), a punk-rock porcupine named Ash (Scarlett Johansson), a timid teenage elephant named Meena (Tori Kelly), and a British gorilla named Johnny (Taron Egerton), who wants to sing instead of following his father’s criminal footsteps.
One of the first things that pops out to me is the animation. Illumination Studios, the folks who brought us the Despicable Me franchise, did some solid work with the little details, like how the animal fur moved, dance choreography, and just overall musical performances.
It’s also visually stunning, Sing! uses some great colors with both the scenery and cast of characters, especially with singers’ performance costumes.
I had no complaints about the voice acting either. With the likes of voice acting veteran Seth MacFarlane, the cast overall was pleasing to the ears. Speaking of ear pleasing, the characters who sang did such an outstanding job, which didn’t surprise me because the actors that I was familiar with have showcased their pipes in a number of works.
The story itself was pretty generic but not terrible, the strongest parts of it were the individual arcs of the main cast, which covered issues like forgiveness, self confidence, and overcoming hardships. Every character was likable, and easy to relate to, which made it easy to forgive the flaws in the narrative.
For me, Sing! definitely was a dark horse, I went into with almost no expectations and I left the theater singing most of the songs from the movie. It’s a fun family film for the holidays, especially if you are a fan of pop music like myself. I give it a solid 8/10.
Sing! (Illumination Entertainment, PG) opens Dec. 20.
