"Sing" | MOVIE REVIEW

You know what kids are gonna relate to? Gangsters and sleazy-ass nightclubs.

Sing is an animated movie from the folks who made Despicable Me and stars Matthew McConaughey as a theater owner who's losing both money and control of his theater pretty fast. In order to hopefully get his theater running and selling tickets again, he puts together a singing contest and shenanigans ensue.

And when I say "shenanigans ensue", I really mean they do ensue, because quite a lot happens in this movie.

I'm gonna be honest with you. The only reason I saw this movie was to see Matthew McConaughey as Buster Moon, the theater owner (who also happens to be a koala) and Taron Egerton as that one gorilla in the posters. The trailers looked okay, so all I was expecting was to be entertained. And Sing actually did entertain me, and there was a lot of stuff in here that I liked.

Starting with...

First off, a lot of the characters were pretty good, and their voice actors put in some worthwhile performances. Johnny (Egerton), for example, had a particularly interesting arc to him and had motivations that you didn't usually see in movies like this. Buster (McConaughey) was a great character, as well. He was likable, charming, and had an energy that he managed to carry over to the other characters.

Surprisingly, Seth McFarlane (yes, the Seth McFarlane) was a part of this cast as well, and it was his character, Mike, that I realized was my favorite the more and more I thought about it. This little guy (he's a mouse) was a hustler and a gambler, and surprising very well-developed as a character, as well. To give you an idea as to what he was like, he was a bit like if you put Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, and Nick Wilde from Zootopia into one character. He was an asshole, but a likable asshole, and just an overall great character.

Kinda like if Ted became a mouse who played the saxophone and had killer singing chops.

In fact, I wouldn't go so far as to say Sing is a movie exclusively for kids. Like I mentioned at the start of my review, this movie has two things that kids will definitely relate to: gangs and sleazy-ass nightclubs. It was like Illumination was trying to let us know that they're about more than just Minions, and I liked seeing that. Props to them for having good adult humor in this movie as well.

Ultimately, it's the characters that revolve around themes you'd generally see in more mature movies that are the most compelling ones. Johnny is a criminal, Buster is hemorrhaging money by the buttload, and Mike is a disgruntled street musician-turned-barhopper. It might just be a personal thing, but I appreciated that the studio had this kind of content in the movie.

For the most part, the soundtrack was pretty good and well-balanced, as well. I only say "for the most part" because Firework was in the movie, but that's just me. There was a nice balance between pop and rock that I found great. The soundtrack also highlights just how great a lot of the performances in the movie were. Before going into this, I was unaware that Taron Egerton and Seth McFarlane could sing, and now I know. Thanks, movie.

"Looking good, Eggsy."

It's also worth noting that this movie has some great comedic timing in it, too.

However, I just couldn't bring myself to think that this movie is a step beyond just being a good family movie, and for a number of reasons, such as the pacing.

This movie has a lot of characters in it that you're supposed to root for, and so the first fifteen minutes or so are spent jumping around each of the characters' day-to-day lives, and that would be fine. However, there are so many characters you have to introduce in such a short amount of time that you hardly get to digest a lot of them properly. This leads to a good amount of these major characters and players being slightly undercooked. For example, Reese Witherspoon's character (Rosita) is a mom who has to take care of her 20-something kids.

That's also way too many kids.

You'd think that being part of this singing contest would add a lot more stress to her already stressful life, but she pushes through with it anyway for almost no reason.

There was this one other character in the movie that I felt as a bit of a cliche, and that was Meena, played by Tori Kelly. She's an elephant and she has stage fright for the sake of the movie having a character with stage fright - I guess having her be an elephant lends some sort of irony to her character but, in the end it comes off as uninspired. I could've bought into it if it showed her being bullied or having an unsupportive family as the reason for her being shy, but it never really shows. There's a lot of support behind her without much backstory.

Personally, I found the ending to be teetering more towards the corny side of things, and I felt the movie could've benefited from 10 minutes more to properly let the plot flow and ebb.

That, and the movie had Firework in it.

Overall, though, Sing was an entertaining family movie that does have a lot in it for both kids and adults. There are a couple of character and pacing issues, but it has some really good characters in it and some great comedic timing to boot. It's good, and certainly deserving of a Jar-Jar thumbs-up.

Have you seen Sing? What did you think about it? Leave a comment, let me know. And, as always, this has been Rafa. Stay classy.