Sing – first look review

Ani­ma­tion is doing real­ly well late­ly, with Pixar in par­tic­u­lar find­ing huge audi­ences with their emo­tion­al, cross-gen­er­a­tional crowd pleasers. Oth­er pro­duc­ers are also attempt­ing to surf this wave with alter­na­tive, even par­o­d­ic ver­sions of the fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed genre, most recent­ly with the infa­mous Sausage Par­ty.

In the midst of this meta mess, over­flow­ing with pop cul­ture ref­er­ences and big emo­tions, a film as mod­est yet clever and engag­ing as Garth Jen­nings’ Sing comes as a breath of fresh air, remind­ing us why we loved those ani­mat­ed films so much in the first place. The title itself is extreme­ly straight­for­ward but points direct­ly at the beau­ti­ful sim­plic­i­ty of the film’s the­sis: if singing makes you feel like a mil­lion bucks, then sing god­dam it.

No one knows that bet­ter than Buster Moon (voiced by Matthew McConaugh­ey, unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cheer­ful), the the­atre direc­tor who, despite eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties, nev­er gives up on his love for show busi­ness. While his opti­mism first appears as a sim­ple kid­die movie trope, the entire film pro­gres­sive­ly imbues it with grav­i­tas to paint a real­is­tic and hope­ful por­trait of enter­tain­ers and the ener­gy that dri­ves them. Moon’s chal­lenge is also con­tend­ing with the fact that every oth­er char­ac­ter has to face the dilem­ma between com­mit­ting to artis­tic dreams or con­tin­u­ing their already com­pli­cat­ed lives.

In addi­tion to that clas­sic prob­lem of the young artist, many more per­son­al issues are explored through the ani­mals tak­ing part in Moon’s singing com­pe­ti­tion. Each is realised with great detail and a sur­pris­ing lev­el of real­ism. From the pres­sures of house­wifery to the chal­lenges of father-son rela­tion­ships, in under two hours, Jen­nings explores the spec­trum of human expe­ri­ence with a star­tling, unapolo­getic refusal to round out the edges. Rosi­ta (Reese With­er­spoon) strug­gles with her 25 piglets but the film doesn’t take the easy route of blam­ing her hus­band for not help­ing her in the house: he works every day and falls asleep right after com­ing home, but not before com­pli­ment­ing her on her hard work.

The not-quite-epic yet excit­ing adven­ture pro­gress­es accord­ing to the basic, prag­mat­ic idea that every char­ac­ter does his or her best giv­en her cir­cum­stances, which doesn’t mean there is no place for spec­tac­u­lar action and strik­ing emo­tion. In fact, hav­ing the ran­dom­ness of life occu­py such a pri­ma­ry place makes for some­times awk­ward, but most often fas­ci­nat­ing twists and mood swings. When the por­cu­pine Ash (Scar­lett Johans­son) realis­es that her boyfriend and band mate may not be what she needs, her cre­ativ­i­ty helps her mourn that rela­tion­ship and become some­one she nev­er thought she could or even want­ed to be. Just as life­like in its unlike­li­ness is the musi­cal pair­ing of Rosi­ta and Gun­ther, the eccen­tric and hyper-dynam­ic Ger­man pig, which doesn’t go smooth­ly but results in odd and inspir­ing changes in both characters.

Shifts in tem­pera­ment are echoed in the film’s undis­crim­i­nat­ing sound­track, nav­i­gat­ing play­ful­ly between mod­ern pop (the cen­sor­ing of Nic­ki Minaj’s crude lyrics is clev­er­ly and hap­pi­ly dodged) and old clas­sics, in par­tic­u­lar with the charm­ing but arro­gant croon­er Mike (Seth Mac­Far­lane) whose ren­di­tion of My Way is pure swoon­ing mate­r­i­al. Mod­ern musi­cals tend to fol­low Baz Luhrmann’s per­ilous path of remix­ing hits by alter­ing their genre, often show­ing a deeply con­fus­ing and offen­sive mis­un­der­stand­ing of what made the orig­i­nal song so suc­cess­ful. There is no such butcher­ing here. Every reg­is­ter is respect­ed and match­es a per­son­al­i­ty. Putting togeth­er Katy Per­ry and Sina­tra, Jen­nings qui­et­ly var­nish­es his explo­ration of life and pas­sion with a sub­tle human­ism, offer­ing a point of entry for all tastes and dreams.