Sing movie review: Funny, musical and a perfect holiday film for kids

If you’re looking for a truly odd movie, and you have nothing better to do with your time, and need your mind to go through some sort of strange sensory stimuli, then the newest animated film Sing is for you. The bonus is if you like popular pop songs of the last twenty years then you’ll exit the theater with a smile on your face. From the same studio that got us Despicable Me, Minions and The Secret Lives of Pets, Sing is a checklist of things that can send kids on a laugh riot. From funny animals talking to funny animals doing funny dances to funny animals singing funnily and finally rendering some sort of a life lesson, Sing is the full package. Matthew McConaughey plays Buster, a high energy Koala whose only option to keep his theater from the banks repossessing it is by conducting a singing contest. If you thought this seems like an outlandish plot, know that the prize money Buster offers is $1000 but a typing error makes the sum look like $100,000 and naturally things go haywire pretty fast. [caption id=“attachment_3180768” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  A still from Sing. Screen grab from Youtube.[/caption] The surprising thing is there is nothing ‘cute’ in this film. The tone is consistently brash and lively with director Garth Jennings choosing guffaw-inducing quirk over the ‘aww’ moments. It’s also very lively – in fact so outrageously lively you can just watch ten minutes of this movie instead of grabbing some coffee to wake up. If you thought the tone of Minions was over the top this movie gives even those yellow monsters a run for their money. Director Jennings also made the hilariously quirky The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy earlier, and some of the off kilter comedy from that film makes it way here. How much of this quirk you can handle is of course dependent on your taste in weird animated movies. There’s no dearth of pop culture showboating here. Apart from McConaughey’s unmistakable Texan drawl you get a barrage of popular names voicing the characters in the film, like Seth McFarlane playing a mouse reminiscent of Frank Sinatra, Scarlett Johansson as a porcupine who gets dumped by her boyfriend, Reese Witherspoon and Nick Offerman as a pig couple having trouble because of the workaholic husband, Nick Kroll as an angry dancing hog and Taron Egerton as a Cockney accent gorilla with a mob boss of a father voiced by Peter Serafinowicz. With such familiar voices as the launch pad and the narrative which is pretty much a mixed tape of your favourite songs it’s hard not to enjoy the easy popcorn entertainment that the film offers. It’s sure predictable but the finale that predictably includes every underdog getting a chance to shine will leave you with the guilty giggles of having enjoyed something you generally wouldn’t. If you have kids you should take them to the theater to see Sing - they will love you for it – especially since they were probably horrified by the number of deaths in the new Star Wars movie. If you’re lucky enough to find a screen playing the film in 2D, choose that one over the 3D.