SING: Fuzzy Feelings Without The High Notes

Admittedly, I’m a great fan of Pixar and I always see Illumination animated films as their slightly poorer cousin, only made slightly more impressive by the fact that DreamWorks animations can be so bad. That being said, I’m willing to give any film and, in this case, any animation a chance. I didn’t have high expectations for Sing but it still seemed worth a go, who doesn’t love a film about the joy of singing? A film about risking it all to do something you love? However, while Sing did try its best to entertain, it failed to hit any high notes (come on, I get to make that joke at least once, or twice).

Borne Of The Zeitgeist

The fact of the matter is that the singing competition has become big business in our modern age. Our Saturday nights are filled with myriad singing and talent shows, all borne of the idea that one special diamond in the rough may be brought to the attention of some record producer. The problem is that, more often than not, these wannabes are either publicly ridiculed or find success at the price of their individuality.

Sing is a film which is trying to look on the more positive side of these singing competitions; it is about hope and a real desire to change your lot in life. It is centered on a number of animals (because it is indeed set in a world occupied by animals, it’s an animation, just go with it) who for one reason or another can’t or have been unwilling to get on stage and sing as they would love to. Which is a nice idea, but doesn’t really play out as a story.

Missing Those High Notes

The film’s central protagonist is Buster Moon (voiced by Matthew McConaughey), an optimistic koala bear who seeks to save his crumbling theatre by holding a singing competition. A singing competition that probably wouldn’t have seen many potential participants had an error not occurred on the promotional flier sending the competition prize sky-rocketing up to $100,000.

This is one of the problems I have with this story. The animal contestants clearly have issues with getting up on stage and singing, money’s not going to change that, so to ever make out that this is a some guiding force for them seems somehow wrong. Though I’ll admit that the film has to hang a backstory somewhere, and so it does on the fact that contestant Mike (a mouse voiced by Seth MacFarlane) is a bit greedy and a card shark to boot. So the money acts as a vehicle for the conflict the film needs, but it is too obvious a plot device to ever really make an impact.

However, the story as whole is not to bad at all. Pig Rosita (voiced by Reese Witherspoon) is a housewife and bored with it, porcupine Ash (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) is a rock musician seeking to step out from her boyfriend’s shadow, gorilla Johnny (voiced by Taron Egerton) is a the warm-hearted son of a bank robber, and elephant Meena (voiced by Tori Kelly) is the quintessential shy but natural singer. And while Mouse Mike is a bit tougher than the rest and set on money and fame, even he eventually gets sucked in because of an urge to sing (and also to show off).

Fuzzy Feelings

The film as a whole sensory experience is kind of nice; the characters are sweet and the story has been well-structured around the idea of risk and hope. Although this never really hits home. This is a singing competition yet everyone, from the auditonees to the final performers are incredible singers, every single one them. So the idea that this is any sort of competition seems a bit hollow. That being said the music is very enjoyable, and to hear people (and see animals) do what they do well is something of a delight. (Although I was bit grumpy that Taron Egerton’s performance of John Legend’s All Of Me was simply used as quiet background music for a bigger scene).

Though the story doesn’t really pack a punch, the ending kind of redeems it. Without giving to much away I feel it drives home an important lesson about competitive singing, and how what we do in life we should do because of real love and not because of attention or wealth. For that, Sing won me over a little and had it steered more closely to the idea throughout the film, with proper highs and lows to enunciate this idea of dreams, and risk, and doing what you love, I would have given it higher praise.

In the preamble to Sing’s release, it regularly got compared to Disney’s Zootopia, and while it doesn’t hit the same spot, it does come kind of close. It’s a nice watch, the story’s good, the voice performances are very entertaining and Nick Kroll as pig Gunter is good for a laugh. But then, it’s also hard with animations not to compare them to the mighty Pixar, which is exactly what you end up doing (and what Sing does to). Sing seeks to replicate Pixar and to inspire children to be themselves and try for what they believe in, but this never really hits home.

Conclusion

The world of computer animation is a competitive territory these days with Pixar’s films putting most animations, and even many live motion pictures, to shame. However, in a field of hits and many, many misses, Sing is close enough to good to make it entertaining. The famous voices can actually act and sing (very well in most cases), the laughs are infrequent but there nonetheless, and the story is sound. What Sing misses in being the kind of inspirational film it wants to be it makes up for in being pleasantly watchable.

I know what you’re thinking, pleasantly watchable? High praise indeed. But I don’t mean that in a bad way – I would sit down any bank holiday or Sunday afternoon to watch this again. I also have no doubt my criticisms about story structure would fall deaf on the ears of a five year old. However, for those of you who will only watch animations of the highest calibre, this probably isn’t for you, but if you’re easy going about these things and fancy a nice, entertaining film, then I would say have at it.

What did you think of Sing? How do you compare the work of Illumination to Pixar? Tell us in the comments below!

Sing is currently on release in the UK, and may still be available in cinemas across the US. For the release date in your country check here.