Sing

Illumination Entertainment seems to have a mixed track record with its animated movies. What all of their films have in common are characters embarking on an adventure through zany antics that aim to be comedic while trying to maintain an adorable appeal for family audiences. Despicable Me set a standard with that formula but the success of the films that followed has been a rollercoaster. It worked well with both Despicable Me movies and The Secret Life of Pets but failed with Hop, The Lorax, and The Minions (and yes I just said The Minions, very willing to argue on it!). The entries that tried to cash in on the nature of these Minions failed in keeping audiences looking for something fresh while annoying them at the same time (something I recognize from personal irritation). So when advertisements started popping up for their newest entry Sing, it looked like a mix of Zootopia meets American Idol. However, considering the studios track record, I was nervous and hopeful for it to be actually good by what was displayed in the trailer. In late November, I went to an advanced screening and left the theater pretty cheerful.

Plot: The story is about a koala who puts on a singing competition at his theater in an effort to save it from closing down. The plot goes a little back and forth between the koala trying to get funding to cover a typo made in creating the competition and the five leading animals who are involved in the contest trying to reconcile parts of their lives that motivate them. This kind of story has been done before and is very predictable to those familiar with the concept. The stories can work depending on how invested you are in the archetypes presented. There's a lot of popular song favorites covered in the movie that leads to the show in the last third of the movie. There's nothing special or emotional in the plot but a lot of zany antics and animal appeal families can enjoy. Overall the story is predictable in how these kind of events would play out with some goofy antics scattered throughout.

Characters: There are a lot of characters in this movie: Buster (voiced by Matthew McConaughey), Rosita (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), Mike (voiced by Seth MacFarlane), Ash (voiced by Scarlett Johanson), Johnny (voiced by Aaron Egerton), and Meena (Tori Kelley). All of these characters act as archetypes for this story taking place in Zootopia Animal Los Angeles city. Buster is an optimistic koala working to save his theater from closure through a singing competition. All of the other aforementioned characters get into the competition: Rosita is a domestic pig and mother of 25 pigs who uses the contest to live her past music dreams, Mike is a small arrogant mouse with a Frank Sinatra style voice, Ash is a porcupine punk rocker, Johnny is a gorilla with passion for singing struggling with his dad's expectations of him, and Meena is an elephant with a great voice afflicted with stage fright. All of the voice actors do a good job but the material they are given isn't much considering that they have many characters makes it difficult to develop them. Enjoying the characters depends on which archetype you can identify with or like to watch. Overall the actors do what they can with characters given limited development only serving as archetypes for a story like this.

Overall Consensus: Sing presents a predictable story with characters given limited growth in an environment with goofy shenanigans spread throughout the story in a cheerful manner. ⭑⭑1/2

Reasons to watch it: You are interested in watching a movie involving anthropomorphic animals that reminds you of Zootopia. You like hearing your favorite pop culture songs being performed in an animated movie. You like watching a movie with some zany antics going on. You like watching movies that have some cuteness factor. You want to watch a family movie that's different from what Disney is currently doing. You want to watch a movie that doesn't have Minions in it (although I'm not sure if there is a Minion short with this movie since I saw it at an advance screening).

Reasons to avoid it: You don't like watching movies with anthropomorphic animals. You are tired of seeing pop culture songs being performed in movies. You don't like animated movies. You care about characters in animated movies being given growth and development.