Sing is a fantastic animated film from the creative minds of Despicable Me and Minions. It is often difficult to review animated films meant for children, but there are still plenty of aspects to talk about. This movie has an amazing voice cast, beautiful animation, and decently-developed characters. While there is a lot of humor and content solely targeted for children, there is still plenty to keep the entire family entertained.
The greatest parts of this film were definitely the voice cast and the adorably amazing characters. Many of the voice actors and actresses seemed to be new to the voice acting game, including Matthew McConaughey, John C. Reilly, Scarlett Johansson, and Taron Egerton among a few others. Them along with voice-acting veterans Reese Witherspoon, Nick Kroll, and Seth McFarlane were all amazing in their roles as the cute animated creatures. It was a bit hard to imagine the new performers in their roles, but they did an exceptional job with their parts. Especially having to sing as well as their characters. Taron Egerton surprised me the most, as I did not know he had those fantastic pipes in him. His performance of "I'm Still Standing" by Elton John honestly gave me chills, and I was not expecting that whatsoever. All of the characters played by this cast of people were very well-developed and I appreciated how much time and effort were put into each individual one. All of the story arcs were very easy to follow and not too much focus was put on one character. This film also utilized the beautiful animation of Illumination Entertainment very well, as Chris Meledandri's trademark animation style was smooth like butter.
Even though this film had fantastic characters and vocal performances, the story was still a bit lacking in originality. Upon my first watch of this, the main thing that I noticed was that it was almost a carbon copy of the aesthetic of Pixar's Zootopia. The only difference between the worlds of Zootopia and Sing, however, was obviously the musical numbers featured in the latter. Another one of the differences between the two that was honestly a misstep for this film was its lack of clear message for the intended child audience. In Zootopia, there was a subtle yet powerful message about racism and inequality. However, while Sing had as much charm as the Pixar film, it simply did not have any strong underlying messages, but was more focused on the simple plot and enjoyment. The only slight message that this film attempted was the generic "just be yourself and express yourself" message that has been done countless times in animated films. However, it is a very easy-to-do plot device that sells well. The final part of this movie that was decent was the humor used throughout. While it was generic and childish, it worked well for the tone all the way through. My only problem was that since the humor worked so cleverly with the story, there didn't seem to be a need for any primitive humor like fart jokes. But lo and behold, of course there is an awkwardly-placed fart joke that made no sense in the context of the overall scene.
This movie is a very childish but entertaining take on the entertainment industry. Sing not only has a wondrous voice cast, but contains many great and memorable characters throughout this animated animal kingdom. Accompanied by a catchy and vast soundtrack, this film touches every great aspect that an animated movie should.
My Rating: ★★★
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