Movie: Sing

School holiday time means lots of children’s movies to see – and to date Sing has been one of my favourites.

For my regular family movie `dates’ – boys aged nine and six – it’s a dead heat between Sing and Moana. They are yet to see Red Dog True Blue and Troll, the other major Victorian December/January school holiday offerings.

For me, the main attraction of Sing was the music and animation. The movie features either full versions or snippets of 65 hit songs.  Surprisingly, given my age, I knew many of them!  As the team responsible for Sing is also behind Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets, the animation is understandably fantastic.

Sing tells of Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey), a dapper koala who presides over a once-grand theatre that has fallen on hard times.  Faced with the crumbling of his life’s ambition, he has one final chance to restore his fading jewel to its former glory by producing the world’s greatest singing competition.

Due to a slight miscommunication with his long-time assistant, a dotty old chameleon named Miss Crawly (Garth Jennings), the promotional fliers offer a grand prize of $100,000 to the winner — which happens to be $99,000 more than Buster has to his name. As a result of the flyer, hundreds of performers show up to the auditions.

Five lead contestants emerge – all who have issues. Mike (Seth MacFarlane) is a money hungry mouse with attitude, Meena (Tori Kelly) is a timid teenage elephant with an enormous case of stage fright, while Rosita (Reese Witherspoon) is an overtaxed mother run ragged tending her 25 piglets. Then there’s Johnny (Taron Egerton), a young gangster gorilla looking to break free from his gangster father, and Ash (Scarlett Johansson), a porcupine struggling to shed her arrogant boyfriend and go solo.

Unfortunately all does not go to plan and as a result of a major disaster, the theatre is destroyed and Buster ends up on the street.   What Buster, with the help of his best friend Eddie the sheep (John C. Reilly), do to make ends meet was one of the highlights of the movie for `my dates’.

The audition scenes provided most of my laughs, while all left with a smile after the triumphant final scene.  And like so many other kids’ movies, that’s the joy of Sing – it’s colorful, it has a happy ending and it’s total escapism!

Sing officially releases on December 26 although previews are now being shown in a number of theatres. For more information visit the Sing website or Universal Pictures Australia facebook page.

*All images @Universal Studios.

Other movies I have enjoyed, which are showing during December and January, include La La Land, Rosalie Blum,  Red Dog: True Blue and  Moana.