Random Movie Review - Sing

Gee this idea has never been done before. But of course it has. I was just being sarcastic. So with Illumination finally starting to make some good films after what happened with their take on The Lorax, we have a film that borrows the setting of Zootropolis (and pretty much every other film where animals dress and behave like us humans) and has a story that is pretty much every talent show in a nutshell, but more specifically those who are focused solely on singing (such as X Factor, Pop Idol and so on). But none of all that means that its bad. In fact I find that its the total opposite of bad and for good reason. So let's see if a film about singing animals is worth your time:

Set in modern times in a world ruled by anthropomorphic animals (like in Zootropolis or Zootopia if you live outside the UK), we meet a non-Australian koala (apparently that's a thing in this world) called Buster Moon (voiced by Interstellar's Matthew McConaughey) who has always had an interest in show business, after his father took him to a show. But since owning the very same theatre that had the show, financial problems have come about. So in the hopes to get it out of financial issues, Buster decides to host a singing competition where the winner would recieve $1,000 prize money. However unbeknownst to him, his assistant Miss Crawly (voiced by Garth Jennings) accidentally adds two more zeroes and the flyers then fly into the city. The very next day, plenty of animals queue up to audition. Among them, we have a devoted motherly pig of 25 piglets called Rosita (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), a mouse with a similar voice to Frank Sinatra called Mike (voiced by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane), a punk rocking teen porcupine called Ash (voiced by Black Widow herself, Scarlett Johansson), an elephant with a heavenly singing voice who suffers with stage fright called Meena (voiced by Tori Kelly), a gorilla who is part of a criminal syndicate and wants to take up singing as a career called Johnny (voiced by fellow Kingsman Taron Egerton) and a passionate dancing pig called Gunter (voiced by Nick Kroll). All of them and the other animals audition, some are picked while the rest are sent home and we see how things go from there with some quite bizarre results.

Since their first Despicable Me film, Illumination's animation has always been top notch and very close to being at the standard of the animated Disney and Dreamworks films which is a good thing as it makes them competitive with those companies and others. So taking into account of the film using two ideas that have been done many times before, I think its still a good film despite that. It has an all star cast who all perform their parts well (especially Seth MacFarlane as he has a fantastic singing voice that just works really well here) and its one of those animated films that probably isn't needed to be seen in 3D, but it is full of colour and fast paced animation that you kind of want to see it in 3D. Its a very enjoyable film and definitely feels like something fresh despite using things that have been used before and kind of putting the ideas into a modern world where people are using technology and phones to get around. Whether you like singing competitions and animals behaving like humans or not, this is still worth your time if any. 8/10