Sing review: Garth Jennings makes his feature animation debut with this utterly charming and entertaining feature from the studio who brought us Minions.
Sing review by Paul Heath, TIFF ’16.
Garth Jennings, the British director whose films Son Of Rambow and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy delighted upon release, turns to animation with this enjoyable feature from the Minions people, Illumination Entertainment, with the musical effort Sing.
A film where you can see/ hear Matthew McConaughey voicing a theatre-owning koala bear named Buster Moon, singing ditties like Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepson will always have me stood first in line. This is what you get with the quirky, well-told animated feature from former music video director Jennings, a film technically could shares a world with tow of the other big animated movies of the year so far, Zootropolis and The Secret Life Of Pets. It’s talking animals again this time around – well, singing animals actually – with the action revolving around McConaughey’s entrepreneur koala Buster who must put on a show of all shows – a huge talent content – to save his beloved theatre. With the help of his secretary, the glass-eyed lizard played by Leslie Jones, who manages to up the prize money from $1000 to $100,000 with an accidental double touch of her keyboard, Buster pulls in talent from across the town – including a grungy porcupine duo, a downtrodden under-appreciated homemaker pig (Reese Witherspoon), an elephant with extremely low self-esteem (Tori Kelly), Taron Egerton as a singing gorilla from a family of criminals, and Seth MacFarlane as a Rat Pack-like, horribly mannered mouse.
Sing is essentially a movie musical full of modern jukebox classics as sung by zoo animals – continuously. However, while not quite having the charm of the likes of the outstanding Zootropolis/ Zootopia from earlier on the year, there’s still lots to love in Garth Jennings’ debut animation. His history in music video making (as one half of Hammer and Tongs – making the vids for the likes of’ Coffee and TV’ by Blur and ‘Driftwood’ for Travis) is evident here, including a wonderful opening section where we’re propelled across town meeting the key characters in a really well put-together musical sequence.
Obviously aiming the film at the mass audiences that tune into the likes of The X-Factor and American Idol every week, the filmmakers have licensed as many musical numbers to keep you interested. You haven’t heard ‘Shake It Off’ until you’ve seen a camp pig perform it with an outrageous dance routine – or experienced Elton John until Taron Egerton’s performing monkey belts out of of his classics.
The film has all the workings of another success for the growing Illumination, a company definitely on the up following their $800 million plus hit The Secret Life Of Pets earlier on this year. With a relatively low $70 million budget and a Christmas release date Stateside all set, expect this to do big business. It will have families lining up to see it as part of their festive celebrations, and have them toe-tapping their way out once the final credits have rolled. It may just be a touch overlong at a huge 110 minutes, but that won’t stop the feel good ‘X-Factor’ of this pleasing, well-cast, animated feature from Jennings and co. that has hit written all over it.
Sing review by Paul Heath at the Toronto International Film Festival 2016.
Sing is released in the United States and Canada in December and the UK in January 2017.
