Sing (2016 film)

Sing
Don't let fear stop you from doing the thing you love.
Genre: Animated Musical Comedy Family Directed by: Garth Jennings Produced by: Chris Meledandri Janet Healy Written by: Garth Jennings Starring: Matthew McConaughey Reese Witherspoon Seth MacFarlane Scarlett Johansson John C. Reily Taron Egerton Tori Kelly Nick Kroll Garth Jennings Cinematography: Guylo Homsy Editing: Gregory Perler Production company: Universal Pictures Illumination Distributed by: Universal Pictures Release date: September 11, 2016 (TIFF) December 21, 2016 (United States) Runtime: 108 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $75 million Box office: $634 million Franchise: Sing Sequel: Sing 2

Sing is a 2016 American computer-animated musical family comedy-drama film produced by Illumination Entertainment. It was directed and written by Garth Jennings and co-directed by Christophe Lourdelet. The film starred the voices of Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson, John C. Reilly, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly, and Nick Kroll, among others. The film was released on December 21, 2016, in the United States by Universal Pictures.

Plot

Dapper Koala Buster Moon presides over a once-grand theater that has fallen on hard times. An eternal optimist and a bit of a scoundrel, he loves his theater above all and will do anything to preserve it. Facing the crumbling of his life's ambition, he takes one final chance to restore his fading jewel to its former glory by producing the world's greatest singing competition. Five contestants emerge: a mouse, a timid elephant, a pig, a gorilla, and a punk-rock porcupine.

Good Qualities

1. The film's ensemble cast does a great job, fitting into their roles nicely, especially Matthew McConaughey as Buster Moon, Scarlett Johansson as Ash, and Taron Egerton as Johnny.
2. Great CGI animation, which its sequel significantly improved its animation.
3. Excellent voice acting, with Nick Kroll sounding as hilarious as Gunter. Aside from that, the voice actors/actresses add charisma to their characters, such as Matthew McConaughey as Buster Moon, Taron Egerton as Johnny, and Scarlett Johansson as Ash.
4. The film's animal designs stand out and have some creativity put into them, and the way they look is also unique, such as Johnny.
5. Buster Moon's backstory at the beginning of the film is engaging, introducing his character and his wants.
6. Johnny's performance of Elton John's "I'm Still Standing" is one of the film's strongest moments since the whole scene was him performing on the piano like a musician (even his dad saw him perform on the TV and was proud of him, therefore).
   • In fact, the performance helped Taron Egerton get cast for the role of Elton John in Rocketman, which is also an excellent biopic film.
7. Despite the animal characters and humorous moments, this movie is more grounded and less cartoonish than any of the other Illumination films.
8. Ash's performance of "Set It All Free" is great as well as being an exclusive and original song made for the movie.
9. Quite a memorable soundtrack; for instance, "Faith" by Stevie Wonder featuring Ariana Grande is a nice song for the film's end credits, especially since Wonder and Grande are excellent musicians and singers, respectively, and the aforementioned "Set It All Free" is an exclusive song for the film.
   • Moreover, the film uses the soundtrack to its advantage, integrating it into transitions and musical numbers, and it's great to see how it worked here.
10. The film has subtle and entertaining cameos. Bill Farmer (the voice of Goofy), Edgar Wright, Wes Anderson, and Snowball (from the Secret Life of Pets) are some of them.
11. The interactions between Buster and Eddie are fun to watch.
12. Johnny's story is easily the most emotional and interesting.
13. One or two heartwarming and emotional scenes.
14. Impressive direction by Garth Jennings.

Bad Qualities

1. The one infamous but rather cringeworthy "Look at her butt" from Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" scene sounds rather perverted, inappropriate, and not that funny for a PG-rated film. In fact, Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" doesn't need to be in this film at all and is extremely out of place for this film, as the song's lyrics are highly inappropriate and disgusting to the point where it could make a listener feel sick.
2. The film reuses many background characters; for example, the same crocodile model is seen many times throughout the film, which is common in most Illumination films.
   • Just like Shark Tale, the ‘anthropomorphic animals’ setting is kind of pointless. If the characters were human, the story would remain the same.
3. There is about very little interaction between the contestants (sans Rosita and Gunter), and their storylines don't interconnect with one another outside of rehearsals.
4. The characterization of Meena can come off as unlikable as she keeps asking for a chance to sing, but when they let her, she gets scared and runs off. That happens three to four times in the movie. Meena also destroyed the stage at the end, which took the group lots of time to rebuild, which can also annoy viewers who care about the finances in the film.
5. The J-Pop singing band of red pandas in the movie speak Japanese, and there are no English subtitles to translate what they are saying.
6. The pacing is sorta weak at times.

Reception

Sing received generally mixed reviews from critics and audiences. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 72% based on 182 reviews and an average rating of 6.49/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Sing delivers colorfully animated, cheerfully undemanding entertainment with a solid voice cast and a warm-hearted – albeit familiar – storyline that lives up to its title.". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 59 out of 100 based on 37 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

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