Thank you AMC theatres for my first major advanced screening. Last year I did get to see In the Heart of the Sea in advanced but I think it was like the same week it was coming out, whereas this is almost a month in advanced but I digress.

Sing is the latest animated film from Universal Studios and Illumination Entertainment, who brought us The Secret Life of Pets, which I haven’t seen yet and don’t really have much interest in, and of course the Despicable Me franchise. The story revolves around a koala bear named Buster Moon, played fantastically by Matthew McConaughey, trying to put on a show that will save his theater which has gone through rough times as of late and hasn’t had single hit production to its name. So he decides to put on a singing competition to try and raise enough money to keep the lights on.

I can tell that this is definitely gonna be a hit because I had a lot of fun with this. The animation is great. It’s really fast paced which really assists with the humor, which is also really good even though it felt like there was a slight lack of it. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of jokes, I just felt like there could’ve been a few more. There were times during the movie where I thought to myself “Was this originally a live action drama about a singing competition but Universal just decided to put in an animated anthropomorphic animal universe?” If that was the case, it was a smart choice to make it an animated animal movie because I don’t think it would have had nearly as much charm.

What really sells this movie is the characters and voice acting (and singing of course). As I said, McConaughey was really good. There were actually times where I forgot it was him. The rest of the cast does a fine job as well but my personal favorite characters were Johnny, played by Taron Egerton and Ash played by Scarlett Johansson. I really enjoyed their specific character arcs and they had the best songs in the movie in my opinion.

Oh yeah, now lets talk about the music. I am definitely buying this soundtrack when it comes out. The majority of songs in the movie are just covers but they’re well done covers and all the actors showed fantastic singing chops. Though I have one minor complaint (more of a nitpick really) with the soundtrack itself. In one of the trailers, you see Johnny singing a part of Stay With Me by Sam Smith. I was really hoping we would see him sing the full song but you only get a tiny bit more which was a bit disappointing.

That leads into my first issue but it’s fairly minor given how well the film holds up as is. For a movie called Sing, there wasn’t very much singing until later in the film. Sure you get moments of the characters rehearsing or just singing to themselves but never any full musical numbers. But again, the rest of the film holds up enough that it’s not a huge deal.

My only other issue is that part of the middle of of the second act did feel like it was dragging a bit. This is yet another case where I feel like they could’ve trimmed something down but I’m just not sure what. Any other issues I have are really just nitpicks, and even that feels like a stretch to even call them that.
Sing isn’t he best animated film of the year, that title goes to Finding Dory, but it’s definitely a close second, though I do still need to see Moana. It has great animation, fun characters, fantastic acting and singing and a lot of heart and charm to it. Definitely check it out this holiday season. You won’t regret it. Sing gets 4.5/5 Microphones.
Up next, my review of the Sorcerer Supreme’s MCU debut, Doctor Strange.