(Movie) “Sing” Review

“A singing competition. Just think, your neighbor, the-the-the grocery store manager, that-that-that-that chicken, right there. Everyone in the city gets a shot at being a star live on my stage!”
-Buster Moon

This year’s probably a musical year, with so many musical movies already (“Moana” being the most frequently championed), “Sing” is not an average-musical movie that pairs vocal talents and a storied narrative. Rather, the melodies produced by the anthropomorphic animals ARE the main instruments in progressing the plot. Certainly, movies such as the renowned “High School Musical” have been utilizing the method in a largely successful manner, but it is my first time to witness these animals singing to overcome their issues, and these animated characters entertain me way better than the humans (sadly, but yeah) 😛 .

“Sing” is about a Koala named Buster Moon, and his attempt to reinvigorate the business of his music theater. His endeavor to do this is through a singing competition, with the intended price of $ 1000. However, his assistant-iguana, Karen Crawley, typed it as $100,000. Unknown of the predicament, a large-scale of animals, from a mouse to a gorilla, try to show off their vocal skills; when the selected few makes it pass the selection process, their personal issues start to get in the way of their quest to cash, and Buster may have to deal with his own problems to avoid his theater getting closed down.

The movie focuses on several animals, namely, Buster the Koala, Mike the mouse, Rosita the pig, Johny the gorilla, Ash the porcupine, and Meena the elephant. These animals have their own quirks, such as Mike’s arrogance, Rosita’s gentle nature, Johny’s timidity to face his father who is an outlaw, Ash’s trouble to deal with her self-centered boyfriend, and Meena’s dealing with her stage-fright. We are provided with these unique traits of the animals and how they deal with their respective personal issues with music being their passion. Hence, we are not given a group of characters with a mutual problem, rather, we are presented short-chapters of each character before moving on to the core problem at hand, Buster’s theater. This storytelling formula makes “Sing” constantly engaging and nicely structured,enabling viewers to follow the slice-of-life tale of these animals, and not making it a movie with bland, generic characters that lack depth.

Announcement time, folks!

Still, that point may be debatable, however, as even though the movie showcases each character’s predicament, the ways their problems are addressed might seem to be overly-quick ones. The characters’ issues are presented as problems which are not possible to be easily solved with a few singing notes, yet that is exactly how they overcome their perplexities. This deus ex machina in the forms of singing is somehow making the movie’s resolution to its greatly-established conflicts lackluster. Still, the fact that the movie is aimed for a wide audience may be a contributing factor to the rushed-nature of ending it, so it is not one flaw deserving an absolute condemnation.

In the end, aside from the points above, nothing much can be said about “Sing” coming from me; the humors are breezily nice, the animations are detailed and fluid, the songs are great (and I am not a song critic, I like what I like XD ), but the shallow execution of the plot makes it mediocre. Although, the attempt to deepen the characters are much appreciated, and it DOES work, to some extent, for a certain segment of the audience.

“Sing” is a movie about falling down and getting back up. Nothing much else. It is movie that I like, but I can’t exactly find a well-grounded, detailed reason for liking it.

Rating from me: 3.5/5