Today I went to see the animated film, Sing! It is about a failing theatre that's owner (Buster Moon) puts on a last resort show to save the theatre. He makes a cash prize of $1000, but because of a clearly avoidable clerical error, the one printed on the flyer was a prize of $100,000. Many contestants swarm the theatre (and why you wouldn't charge a small audition fee is beyond me for such a failing business) and Buster picks an absurdly small amount of contestants to put on a one night show and then makes each of the acts his own. One gets injured, a group breaks up, this leaves only 5 performers and a groveling girl who can't get a grip on her stage-fright and becomes the stagehand.
Now, although I have several critiques for many of the characters, I still enjoyed this movie. I was extremely surprised to see Seth MacFarlane cast in a kids movie, but he pulled off a sleazy, Sinatra-esque mouse. I was a bit disappointed to see how incredibly white-washed this cast was, however. Yes, Reese Witherspoon as Rosita was great, as were the other performers, but for a movie that is about all different people from different walks of life, having a nearly completely white cast is a bit deceiving, don't you think? On one thought though: Did you not see Shrek 2? Clearly Jennifer Saunders needed more time on screen or at least a song (Not that Jennifer Hudson didn't do a good job for her 30 seconds of time).
I'd like to now talk about Buster Moon as a boss. He is absolutely terrible and made me irrationally angry at a children's movie. At the very beginning, the staff is nearly busting down his door because they were not paid. To me, personally, if you cannot afford your staff, you do not deserve to be in business. If I were Judith from the bank, I would have shut him down before he even had the notion of putting on an unprofitable show. He would be arrested for several kinds of fraud and the fact that Buster Moon is a simple, unreliable mooch makes him a terrible role model for being a person in charge. Also, don't buildings like the theatre have to be insured? Wouldn't he get insurance money from the "freak" flood he caused by making unreliable glass floors (Seriously you make poor Meena take LITERALLY all of the thin glass panes out of windows to make a whole floor and wall out of? You obviously needed Rosita's tact for something that crazy)?
Then there was the whole section of film for the J-pop group that ended in Buster accidentally insulting them and acts like he's the problem when trying to kick them out the whole time. They could have been great and adorable with their Kira Kira song! (And yes Kyary songs are cute, but I think a better choice would have been from actual idol groups like Morning Musume or PASSPO☆ or anything like that!) They were like a Japanese version of Crayon Pop!
On the topic of music, I liked the (kind of) variety and the execution. Having Johnny perform "I'm Still Standing" at the end was nostalgic, and I liked that Ashe got to perform her own song ((Though only a little sad she didn't reference Becky with the good hair) This is all I know from that Beyonce album) I did not like Rosita and Gunter's song choice "Shake it Off." It felt forced and meaningless for these characters. It was merely to pull a popular Taylor Swift song into the mix to entertain the kids. Rosita's outfit at the end was great though, very unexpected!
Animation-wise, this big budget film was a little..inconsistent? I understand that different hair-types are difficult to animate, but the texturing seemed to change throughout the movie for several of the characters.
Over-all I would give this movie a 2.5/5! It was enjoyable the music was fun, but I won't go out of my way to see it again. The morals were all over the place for a kids movie and that was really off-putting (Great hits like: It's okay to be a cheat if your girlfriend is there to support you! Or your dad might be in jail, but it's only worth a performance if he breaks out of jail to tell you how proud he is! How about get the nervousness bullied out of you by strangers? Boyfriend cheat on you? Don't worry he totally misses you now that your successful! Let the old lady buy your debt from you because she felt pity on your situation! The list goes on..)
Gosh, I didn't mean for this to be such a negative post! I'll try to do better for next time!
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