★★★☆☆
IF last year’s Trolls didn’t give you enough brightly-coloured, peppy-animated energy then here to fill that void is Sing – the music-filled animation from Illumination Entertainment, aka the studio that the Minions built.
Matthew McConaughey leads an all-star voice cast as Buster Moon, an eternally optimistic koala bear who has the idea of holding a singing competition for every creature great and small of the city – from the tallest giraffe to the smallest mouse – in an attempt to save his struggling theatre from closing down.
When a harmless mistake occurs with the prize money amount on the fliers ($100,000 instead of just $100) he finds himself overrun with amateur singers all desperate to make the big time and claim the prize he can’t afford.
These include Johnny the gorilla (Taron Egerton), Rosita the housewife pig (Reese Witherspoon) and Mike the con artist mouse (Seth MacFarlane).
Last summer’s mammoth hit Zootropolis – also about animals going about city life as if they were human – comes immediately to mind and it just doesn’t have the same sort of consistent wittiness and depth beyond its pretty single-minded concept.
It’s essentially an animated X Factor but with singing animals and it plays that note to the Nth degree.
But it’s a note that it hits with a polished slickness and enjoyable bravado.
There’s something inherently funny about seeing a pig, so fed up with her domesticated and repetitive housewife lifestyle, singing Shake It Off ;or a gorilla, desperate to avoid the life of crime his overbearing father has earmarked for him, belting out Stay With Me.
It’s like being hit over the head with a jukebox but, you know, in a fun kind of way.
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