Am reviewing these amazing animations movie: sing 2016
These movie is directed and written by Garth Jennings and produced by Illumination, one of my favorites production.
Every major character enters it carrying a different problem. Rosita is buried beneath domestic responsibilities. Johnny is caught between his own ambitions and his father's expectations. Ash is trying to establish an identity outside her relationship. Mike represents ambition without much moral discipline. And Meena possesses an extraordinary voice but is almost defeated by her inability to perform publicly.
That makes Meena particularly interesting for me as I practically relate to her struggles.
Her problem is not a lack of ability. But fear.
The film therefore separates two ideas that are often treated as the same thing: talent and confidence. Someone can possess enormous ability and still be unable to demonstrate it. Meena becomes the clearest representation of that idea because her greatest obstacle is not another contestant. It is the psychological wall between her and the audience.
Meena's character is one of the film's strongest ideas that inspire me.
Her eventual performances carry more weight than simply being impressive musical moments. The significance is not only that she can sing. The significance is that she finally allows other people to hear what she has been keeping inside.
The film understands the entertainment industry
Another interesting aspect of Sing is that it doesn't completely romanticize show business.
Buster Moon is ambitious, but he is also reckless. His dream of saving his theater leads him into increasingly complicated situations. That makes the movie surprisingly relevant to the way entertainment works outside animation. Music is the engine of Sing. The movie contains more than 65 songs, drawing from different periods and genres rather than restricting itself to one musical style. This is one of the film's smartest commercial and artistic decisions. The songs are recognizable, but their function goes beyond making the movie entertaining. Different characters use different musical styles to express their personalities.
Rock, pop, soul, ballads and older standards become different languages for different characters.
This also explains why the final performances work so well. The movie spends so much time establishing the characters' relationships with music that the performances become expressions of personality rather than random musical interruptions.
Johnny wants to perform instead of following his father's criminal world.
Rosita discovers that being a mother doesn't have to erase her individuality.
Ash learns that her artistic identity cannot depend entirely on another person.
Meena has to confront her fear.
Buster himself represents the dreamer who refuses to abandon an idea even when reality keeps attacking it. These aren't identical struggles, but they intersect through the stage. The animation serves the comedy rather than overwhelming it. The result is a movie that can appeal to children without making the entire experience inaccessible to adults.
The underdog formula is extremely effective, but it is also predictable. The characters are designed around recognizable archetypes, and many of their emotional journeys follow patterns audiences have seen before.
But that doesn't necessarily make the movie ineffective.
The competition begins as a mechanism for winning money and saving a theater. But the movie gradually moves toward a larger idea that performing is not valuable only because somebody wins.
Image source: IMDb
Happy scrobbing
Rating: 100/100