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‘Sing Sing’ Is One of the Best Things You’ll See This Year. ‘It Ends With Us’ Is … Not. (Our 700th Episode!)

In Sean and Amanda’s 700th episode, they discuss a slightly deranged docket of films this week, then are joined by director Greg Kwedar to talk about ‘Sing Sing’

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In their 700th episode , Sean and Amanda discuss news that the Brad Pitt and George Clooney vehicle Wolfs will have a one-week limited theatrical release before moving to streaming, then talk about a slightly deranged combination of films this week (0:45). First up, they dive into Sing Sing , a deeply moving prison drama starring Colman Domingo about a small group of prisoners attempting to stage a theatrical production (11:53). Then, they transition to the bizarre and controversial Colleen Hoover adaptation It Ends With Us , starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni (28:11). Finally, Sean is joined by Sing Sing director Greg Kwedar to discuss how this extraordinary film came together, casting formerly incarcerated actors, the unusual rollout of the film, and more (1:08:45).

Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Sasha Ashall Engineers: Aleya Zenieris and Jack Sanders

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Art as the great escape — why the prison drama Sing Sing is a must-see

Casting actors who were formerly incarcerated adds an air of authenticity to the film.

New film Sing Sing shines a light on healing power of prison theatre programs

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There have been many films set in prison. Some with great performances. But there's never been a film like Sing Sing .

The story revolves around the two Divines.

John (Divine G) Whitfield is a prisoner at the maximum-security prison Sing Sing. Convicted of a crime he didn't commit, he pours himself into writing and activism. He's a jailhouse lawyer, an author and a founding member of the prisoner-led theatre company RTA, Rehabilitation Through the Arts.

Then there's Divine Eye, otherwise known as Clarence Maclin. He's a wolf who prowls the prison yard fleecing the weak, and yet, some RTA members see potential hiding under the hustler's bravado.

Clarence Maclin grimaces in a prison gymnasium.

The kindly jailhouse veteran and the intimidating thug may seem like shopworn characters, but what elevates Sing Sing is the veracity of the actors. Combined with the actuality of the setting (a decommissioned jailhouse, down the river from the actual Sing Sing), the result is nothing less than a testament to the transformational power of art.

Sing Sing comes from the filmmaking team of Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley.

I first discovered their work with 2022's Jockey , a film with dirt under its fingernails set in the world of horse riders and trainers. While Jockey was anchored by the heartfelt performance of character actor Clifton Collins Jr., many of the other actors on the screen were real-life jockeys.

With Sing Sing , Kewdar and his filmmaking partner and co-writer Bentley doubled down on the idea of inviting a community into the filmmaking process by casting ex-prisoners, actual alumni of the very real RTA program .

When you see the prisoners sitting in a circle warming up, Sean (Dino) Johnson, Cornell (Nate) Alston, Camillo (Carmine) LoVacco and David (Dap) Giraudy are essentially playing versions of themselves.

In fact, RTA is one of a number of prisoner-led theatre companies.

In Canada Shakespeare in the Ruins runs workshops at Stony Mountain prison outside of Winnipeg. There's also Victoria's William Head on Stage , Canada's longest-running prison theatre company.

B.C. actor Patrick Keating has performed at William Head, where he has also worked as a facilitator.

Speaking to CBC News, he explained how he caught the acting bug when he was serving a sentence for robbery in Matsqui Penitentiary in Abbotsford, B.C.

"When you're inside [prison], there's a lot of masks that you wear, there's definite armour that you put on. This allows you to drop that and to be something else."

Actor Patrick Keating explains how he fell for theatre in prison

In the film Sing Sing , for pure grit and presence, no one comes close to what Maclin channels on the screen. There are not many actors who could hold their own with the Oscar-nominated Colman Domingo.

As Whitfield, Domingo exudes a guarded sense of optimism, someone who has been battered by the justice system and husbands his sense of hope. But that faith is tested when Maclin joins the actor's circle.

When Whitfield tries to offer some advice, Maclin spits back, "You don't get to tell me what I need in prison."

Director Greg Kwedar and actor Colman Domingo on the set of Sing Sing sittig on benches.

What Maclin shows with vivid clarity is a man warped by a lifetime of conflict and abuse. The act of acting requires vulnerability, but in prison that's a weakness.

The story begins with the RTA group preparing for a new production. The group's facilitator, Brent, is played by Paul Raci. You may remember him as the long-haired addiction therapist from The Sound of Metal .

A veteran actor and teacher, Raci is perfectly cast as a man who helps the men explore their characters. Part of the pleasure of Sing Sing comes from watching Brent pull the prisoners out of their shells with simple warm-up exercises, such as when he asks the group to imagine their most perfect spot. The unscripted stories they share are touching and tinged with tragedy.

a group of prisoners smile while watching a rehersal

As production coalesces around the original play Breakin' the Mommy's Code , a rich gumbo of genres and characters, members of the group respond differently. Whitfield's pride is tested. Maclin lands an enviable role, but will the newest recruit truly engage with the material as Prince Hamlet?

At its heart, Sing Sing is a testament to the power of art and its ability to help people step outside themselves. Art can be prayer. It can be an escape and therapy. In too many institutions, the arts are seen as unnecessary. Extracurricular activities with unquantifiable benefits.

But then how else could you explain what Clarence Maclin does? Going from a prisoner who couldn't see a future to someone who by all rights should be an Oscar contender.

Sing Sing's star and director on collaborating with former prisoners and the discovery of Clarence Maclin

While prisons are often seen as a place of punishment, Sing Sing is about the living, breathing work of rehabilitation. You can see it in the faces of the actors on opening night and in the careful choice of language.

When Maclin first enters the group, his speech is littered with the N-word. At one point, Whitfield corrects him, saying they don't use that word. Instead, the members call each other "beloved."

That's a choice that Domingo explained to CBC News was intentional.

"You say my beloved … You have to deconstruct any hyper-masculine thoughts. You have to use the word love. That's what it is in their brotherhood. Because that's your brother."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Senior entertainment reporter

Eli Glasner is the senior entertainment reporter and screentime columnist for CBC News. Covering culture has taken him from the northern tip of Moosonee Ontario to the Oscars and beyond. You can reach him at [email protected].

More by this author

Rehabilitation in Spite of Prison

Although the movie Sing Sing is, as the promos say, “based on a true story,” it’s a work of art. The film, directed by Greg Kwedar and co-written by Kwedar and Clint Bentley, is also about art: in this case, a play performed inside Sing Sing prison, via a program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts. […]

susie day writes about prison, policing, and political activism. She’s also written political satire, a collection of which, Snidelines: Talking Trash to Power , was published in 2014. In 2020, her book, The Brother You Choose: Paul Coates and Eddie Conway Talk About Life, Politics, and The Revolution was published by Haymarket . She lives in New York City with her partner, the infamous Laura Whitehorn.

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If you read the synopsis of "Sing Sing," you might mistake it for a movie you've seen before. It's a drama starring Colman Domingo as one of a group men in serving time in prison whose participation in a theater arts program gives them something to look forward to and improves them as human beings. It ends on what a studio boss might call an "up note." But it doesn't move or feel like any other prison movie, or movie about theater students, that I've seen, and its commitment to the truth of its characters -- and of life itself -- is rare and precious.

Writer-director Greg Kwedar and his script partner Clint Bentley developed the project after buying the rights to the 2005 Esquire article “The Sing Sing Follies,” by John H. Richardson. But they didn't just shrink-wrap a true story in Hollywood cliches. They did what good journalists would do and re-reported the entire thing by interviewing people from the story as well as various participants in the Sing Sing correctional facility's theater program. Then they cast some key roles with people who went through that same program.

And then—the crowning touch—they kept the movie loose and airy (but never slow) and allowed scenes to play out in a way that feels real, especially in the drama club meetings. Participants are shown rehearsing scenes, talking about their meaning and construction, giving each other notes on how to perform the material, and talking about how the art informs their lives (or the reverse). The result is probably closer in feeling to work by an English "realist" director like Mike Leigh or Ken Loach , letting the form of a scene or an entire sequence change according to whatever's happening onscreen that's most interesting and shooting it in a way that makes it feel like it's all spontaneously happening. The film crew strives to get as nice a shot as they can without sacrificing that feeling of immediacy.

Domingo plays Divine G, one of many real people who went through the program. He was an actor and aspiring playwright in high school before his life went off the rails. He's a devotee of theater, loves to act and read plays, and approaches it all with the quiet fervor of somebody who found religion behind bars. Some of the most memorable images in "Sing Sing' focus on Domingo's face in closeup as Divine G performs, thinks, or silently observes others.

The prison is a cold, cruel place full of violent men whose daily life revolves around trying not to antagonize the alpha dogs within the prison population or the guards looming over them. Discipline/punishment seems arbitrary. Cells get "tossed' by guards in a heedless manner that seems meant more to humiliate and terrorize than find forbidden things.

The theater program is an oasis from all of that. "We're here to be human again," one participant says. It's also a place where the effectiveness of art as a tool of enlightenment can be demonstrated just by showing a bunch of actors doing their thing.

Paul Raci, who was so memorable as the hero's mentor in "The Sound of Metal," is a measured and understated but strong presence as the group leader who has to wrangle all of the egos assembled in front of him every week. He has an ego himself: the movie doesn't get into the details, but it's inferred that he writes all of the original plays performed by the group, that while he takes suggestions for what types of material to combine, it's ultimately his show, and he has to go off and struggle with the blank page just like any other author.

There's a bit of tension courtesy of a dynamic but edgy and sometimes combative new troupe member, Divine Eye. He's played by Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin, who went to Sing Sing for armed robbery in real life and is playing a fictionalized version of himself here. At first, it seems as if the movie is setting up a rivalry between the two Divines, possibly an " All About Eve " scenario about jealousy and treachery in a theater group.

But here, as elsewhere, "Sing Sing" doesn't choose a well-trod path. Divine G is a fundamentally decent person who has insecurities like anybody (the suppressed terror in the character's eyes when he fears he's about to be eclipsed by a newcomer is beautifully expressed). But he also has enough self-control and confidence to see beyond the immediate moment and transform a potentially ruinous situation into something beautiful just by being his best self. The burgeoning relationship between these two actors is the secret backbone of the movie, and its conclusion has the kind of understated sincerity that old movies by directors like Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder used to do so well.

"Sing Sing" is a small enough movie that it won't be playing in every multiplex. But you should still try to see it with an audience if possible because it's the kind of film that reaffirms what the experience is about. You can feel the collective mental hum of an audience recognizing what the movie is up to — usually a few beats after it has started down a specific path, because it's pretty sly about what it's doing. Sometimes the movie seems to be going off on a tangent, only to reveal itself as an element that would diminish the whole if removed.

I learned, and rediscovered, a lot about film, theater, and the arts while watching “Sing Sing.” The more you sit with it, the more you admire everything it does and is.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film Credits

Sing Sing (2024)

106 minutes

Colman Domingo as John 'Divine G' Whitfield

Clarence Maclin as Himself

Sean San Jose as Mike Mike

Paul Raci as Brent Buell

David "Dap" Giraudy

Patrick "Preme" Griffin

James "Big E" Williams

Greg Kwedar
Clint Bentley

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Common sense media reviewers.

Musical has great songs, slapstick laughs, mixed messages.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Offers some background about the difference betwee

Clear messages about believing in yourself, pursui

A mixed bag. The characters work hard, pursue thei

Mob-like Russian bears want to kill Mike for cheat

Mouse Mike sees a female mouse, ogles/flirts with

Insults and exclamations, like "stupid," "fool," "

Nothing in the movie, but plenty of tie-in merchan

Animals drink at the club.

Educational Value

Offers some background about the difference between high art and performance and popular art.

Positive Messages

Clear messages about believing in yourself, pursuing your dreams, being brave, trying hard, working together, and performing for the joy of it -- but it's important not to overlook the fact that Buster lies to everyone and still comes out OK/is rescued in the end (though you can also interpret events as conveying the idea that lying to others doesn't succeed and cheaters get found out). Some viewers may also raise an eyebrow at what Rosita's story says about how the movie views motherhood/homemaking.

Positive Role Models

A mixed bag. The characters work hard, pursue their dreams, and learn to believe in themselves, but they're not all clear-cut role models, and there's some stereotyping based on gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. Rosita is a devoted wife and mom who manages to take care of her family even while auditioning and rehearsing for the show, but her husband/kids don't even register her absence for days/weeks, which raises serious questions about how the movie views the value of her role at home. Johnny wants to be his own person and not just follow the family business (crime), but he also desperately wants his convict father's approval. Mike is consistently egotistical, rude, and dismissive to others (even calling them names), but he eventually sort of discovers the value of teamwork and others' talent. When forced to, Buster comes clean about his lies and ends up showcasing the talent and what his theater is capable of producing (but he's also rescued by others after making serious mistakes). Meena is terribly afraid of the spotlight but learns to find her voice and follow her passion. Gunter convinces Rosita to let go and not be afraid to dance. Nana has exacting standards for what qualifies as art/theater.

Violence & Scariness

Mob-like Russian bears want to kill Mike for cheating at cards; a glass aquarium shatters, flooding and destroying the theater in a spectacular collapse (it's not clear everyone is OK immediately, but they are); car chases/pursuits. Police pursue an escaped convict with helicopters and more. Buster puts himself in peril to hook up electricity (illegally). A character is injured when stagelights fall on him. Ash's quills pepper the audience during her song. Some arguments/confrontations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Mouse Mike sees a female mouse, ogles/flirts with her, and they become a couple after he starts flashing his cash around. A male pig kisses his wife after she sings and dances to "Shake It Off" (wearing what, for her, is a quite revealing/sexy costume). A young, unmarried porcupine couple lives together until she catches her boyfriend cheating on her -- flirting, hugging, and singing with another porcupine. A rabbit act auditions to the lyrics "oh my gosh, look at her butt," waggling their own rear ends. Another act performs a snippet of "Butterfly," which has the lyric "come, my lady." Buster and Eddie wash cars in their Speedo swimsuits.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Insults and exclamations, like "stupid," "fool," "loser," "porky," "nobody," "namby pamby," "fat," "jerk," "holy moley," and "fart." Possible use of "hell" in Ash's song.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Nothing in the movie, but plenty of tie-in merchandise/promotions -- from apparel and toys to accessories, figurines, and Happy Meals.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Sing is an animated comedy (with tons of music/singing) from the producers of the Despicable Me films. It centers around a theater-owning koala (voiced by Matthew McConaughey ) who decides to run a talent contest to boost ticket sales for his financially flagging theater. The A-list voice cast, reality talent show premise, familiar pop songs, and cute animal characters make this an appealing pick for families with young kids. But note that there's some peril/danger: Angry gangster bears try to kill a cheating mouse, a gorilla thief is mean to his son, and a building collapses spectacularly, putting many key characters in danger. There are also slapstick laughs, silly jokes, risque moments (from bunny singers waggling their bottoms while they sing "oh my gosh, look at her butt!" to a pig husband passionately kissing his wife after she performs in a sexy costume), and insult language ("stupid," "porky," etc.). And while the movie clearly promotes trying hard, being brave, working together, and following your dreams, it also has some stereotypes and mixed messages about lying, parent-child relationships, and the value of motherhood/homemaking. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (84)
Kids say (114)

Based on 84 parent reviews

This Company Only Wants Your Money

Not what we want, what's the story.

SING is the story of ambitious theater-owning koala Buster Moon (voiced by Matthew McConaughey ), who needs a hit show to save his beloved theater from foreclosure. Buster has the bright idea to host a singing competition at the theater, but, due to a printing error, the reward on the promotional flyer changes from $1,000 (which he didn't even really have) to $100,000. Once news of the big payoff spreads, local contestants vie for the top spot, including under appreciated pig mama Rosita ( Reese Witherspoon ); Johnny ( Taron Egerton ), the son of gorilla crime boss Big Daddy ( Peter Serafinowicz ); punk-rocker porcupine Ash ( Scarlett Johansson ); and shy elephant Meena (Tori Kelly), who has the pipes but not the confidence. Then there's arrogant crooner mouse Mike ( Seth MacFarlane ), who's so sure he'll win that he spends and gambles, making him (and consequently the theater) a target for angry Russian bear mobsters.

Is It Any Good?

Featuring appealing covers of hit songs and an all-star cast, this cute animated comedy capitalizes on the craze for both talking-animal adventures and talent competitions. The movie may not have the substance of Inside Out or the overt messages of Zootopia , but, like Trolls , it's simple, with catchy pop music and jokes that are likely to make kids laugh. (Unlike Trolls , its take-aways aren't quite as thoroughly positive -- see below.) The musical numbers are by far the best part of the movie, including Jennifer Hudson -voiced renditions of "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight" to the piggy duet of "Shake It Off" (by Witherspoon and comedian Nick Kroll as a German boar called Gunter) to Kelly's show-stopping version of "Hallelujah."

The music is what makes Sing worth the price of admission, because, story- and theme-wise, there are a few missteps that keep it from greatness. Like, say, the depiction of Rosita's home life. She does everything for her 25 piglets, and her burnt-out husband ( Nick Offerman ) barely registers her. He's so checked out that he doesn't notice when she sets up a Rube-Goldberg contraption to keep the household working when she can't secure a babysitter to participate in the contest. And then there's poor Johnny, who desperately wants his criminal father's approval. A child wanting a parent to see them shine is wonderful, but did they have to make the father in question a bank robber? But if what you want is a bubbly diversion you''l find yourself singing along to after the credits roll, then Sing hits the spot. Just don't think about it too hard.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Sing 's messages. What does it say about finding your voice and following your dreams? How does it promote teamwork , courage , and perseverance ? Why are those important character strengths ?

Who are the movie's role models ? What do they do that makes them admirable?

Did you notice any stereotypes in the movie? How can non-human characters reinforce stereotypes that we typically associate with people?

Some critics have said that the movie doesn't treat its female characters particularly well, from Rosita's absence at home barely being noticed, to Ash's bad relationship, to Buster's behavior toward Miss Crawly. Do you agree?

Why do you think Johnny is so desperate for his dad's approval, even though his dad is a criminal? Do you think he would have felt he succeeded if he hadn't gotten that validation?

Movie Details

In theaters : December 21, 2016
On DVD or streaming : March 21, 2017
Cast : Matthew McConaughey , Scarlett Johansson , Taron Egerton , Reese Witherspoon
Director : Garth Jennings
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Universal Pictures
Genre : Family and Kids
Topics : Arts and Dance , Cats, Dogs, and Mice , Horses and Farm Animals , Music and Sing-Along , Wild Animals
Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 108 minutes
MPAA rating : PG
MPAA explanation : some rude humor and mild peril
Last updated : June 22, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Sing (2016)

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Movie Review: ‘Sing Sing’ cheers the power of art inside a maximum security prison

This image released by A24 shows, from left, Paul Raci, Sean San José, Colman Domingo, Sean “Dino” Johnson, and Mosi Eagle from “Sing Sing.” (A24 via AP)

This image released by A24 shows, from left, David “Dap” Giraudy, Sean San José, and Colman Domingo from “Sing Sing.” (A24 via AP)

This image released by A24 shows Colman Domingo, right, and Clarence Maclin in a scene from “Sing Sing.” (A24 via AP)

This image released by A24 shows Colman Domingo in a scene from “Sing Sing.” (A24 via AP)

This image released by A24 shows Colman Domingo, left, and Clarence Maclin in a scene from “Sing Sing.” (A24 via AP)

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“Sing Sing” follows the well-trodden path of a motley group of amateur actors as they come together to rehearse and put on a play in front of their peers. It’s different this time, though, because everyone is a captive audience.

The movie is set inside a maximum security prison in New York state, highlighting a real-life rehabilitation program that works to offer inmates an artistic outlet and featuring a cast that includes many formerly incarcerated actors.

This is a premise that could turn horrifically treacly or maudlin. But Greg Kwedar — who directs and co-writes with Clint Bentley — has a firm, no-nonsense but emotional hand, even if he uses a few too many razor wire-though-the-window shots.

It’s a cinematic high-five to all arts programs behind bars and, in particular, the power of theater. If you are a cynic, “Sing Sing” may be an elaborate infomercial for its Rehabilitation Through the Arts program. Even if it is, it’s wonderful. Cynics are not welcome here.

Part of its power is Colman Domingo , who is finally becoming indispensable in Hollywood. He got his flowers in George C. Wolfe’s “Rustin” and now deserves a larger bouquet playing not just a key part of the Sing Sing theater program, but its soul.

To see inmates acting — which requires participants to be real, vulnerable and honest — isn’t “something men don’t get to do too often,” says the program’s director, one of movie’s only free characters, played by a nicely understated Paul Raci.

We first find Domingo as Divine G, a one-time “Fame”-high school actor and playwright, trying to help determine which show they should mount next and who will be onstage. He’s a lot like other actors — a tad vain, self-involved and reverential when it comes to the craft.

He is challenged by the appearance of the very dangerous gangster Divine Eye — played fiercely by magnetic former inmate Clarence Maclin — who has a raw poet’s heart underneath all that menace. (“My slings and arrows are on the inside,” he says).

Taming him to be emotionally open — or at least not bashing in the skull of someone passing behind him, a prison no-no — will take some nuance and patience.

“Sing Sing” is based on “The Sing Sing Follies,” a 2005 Esquire article by John H. Richardson, as well as personal interviews that Kwedar and Bentley conducted with current and former participants. (The real person Domingo plays in the movie, John “Divine G” Whitfield, has a cameo, a nice touch).

Kwedar’s camera is often shaky and he sometimes has his actors talk in overlapping dialogue, giving “Sing Sing” a documentary feel. He is sober about the indignities inside, from random violence to endless lines.

Domingo in a scene from “Sing Sing.” (A24 via AP)

Surrounding these men is a faceless, pityless system filled with guards routinely tossing cells, stern parole boards and lockdown sirens. The acting program allows individual expression in a world where they are mere numbers in prison green.

The movie’s band of actors — now tired of heaviness after having just done Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — ask for a comedy and the director dreams up an insane one, featuring ancient Egyptian mummies, time travel, Old West gunslingers, Freddy Krueger, gladiators and a soliloquy from “Hamlet.”

The movie’s most affecting scenes are the ones that follow the inmates doing the craft — tender auditions, reciting their lines while doing chores and working on their characters. Watching them giddy backstage in costume before a show is all of us.

“We here to be human again,” says one.

The movie’s script is not content with a just inmates-put-on-a-show premise so it has added some depth — parole board freedom for one in the cast and a sudden death. Sometimes they are clunky touches and you just want to go back to the scenes where the inmates are bonding and bursting with art. “Sing Sing,” after all, is a song about how art can sustain us in even the darkest hours.

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

“Sing Sing,” an A24 release in movie theaters Friday, is rated R for language throughout. Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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‘Sing Sing’ Review: Divine Interventions

A deep-tissue turn by Colman Domingo and a breakout performance by Clarence Maclin lift this moving drama about a prison theater program.

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A man in a purple hoodie sits next to a man in a green shirt and white undershirt.

By Lisa Kennedy

Spoken by the two key characters in the prison-set drama “Sing Sing,” the word “beloved” is as moving as it is unexpected. It uplifts and gently shatters. It makes a case for the deep respect and deeper amity forged in a theater program set up at the eponymous maximum-security facility.

Colman Domingo imbues his character John Whitfield, a.k.a. Divine G, with a steadfast compassion but also the tamped-down frustrations of a man convicted of a crime he says he didn’t commit. And Clarence Maclin — a formerly incarcerated newcomer whose story, along with that of the actual Whitfield, the film is built upon — burrows into his former self in a finessed and fierce performance as Divine Eye, the prison-yard alpha who auditions for Sing Sing’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts theater program. That program is the movie’s other star.

The film, directed by Greg Kwedar from a script written with Clint Bentley, orbits the prickly relationship between G, a much-respected member of the R.T.A. ensemble, and Eye. We first meet Eye shaking down a wan mark and conducting his drug business in the prison yard. G and his best friend, Mike Mike (Sean San José in a poignant turn), watch, waiting to gauge Eye’s genuine interest in the acting program. There’s a long wait-list.

A published writer, G spends his time away from the rehearsal room in the library or at his typewriter building his clemency appeal or researching the cases of fellow inmates. Eye, possessing a gap-tooth smile he’s slow to reveal, is a psychological pugilist looking for the soft spot to land the hurtful punch.

From the jump, Eye challenges G’s standing. He’s the prince of the hard gaze. Nothing sits right with him. He thinks the warm-ups are goofy. (They are until they aren’t.) When a fellow actor crosses behind him during the blocking of a scene, he’s ready to pummel.

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Review: ‘Sing’ Doesn’t Just Play The Standards, It Lowers Them

David ehrlich.

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Before we talk about “ Sing ,” let’s talk about Satan. Remember the scene in “Broadcast News” when Albert Brooks tries to convince Holly Hunter that her handsome new crush is Lucifer? She dismisses him, but Brooks is undeterred. He argues that the most insidious thing about true evil is that it comes to you like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. “He’ll never do an evil thing! He will just bit by little bit lower our standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance.”

I’m semi-serious here. Born from the blood money earned by 20th Century Fox atrocities like “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Horton Hears a Who!,” Illumination Entertainment has been working toward a movie this cynical and creatively bankrupt since “Ice Age” executive producer Chris Meledandri founded the company in 2007. It was always just a matter of time.

READ MORE: How They Animated ‘Sing’ With a Live-Action Vibe Like ‘The Commitments’ — Video

For Pixar, story is everything. For Illumination, story is a lubricant for cross-promotional opportunities. Hyperactivity, constant noise, and calculated cuteness reign supreme. They came out of the gate swinging with “Despicable Me,” but that reasonably clever comedy about an evil genius with a heart of gold would prove to be their crowning achievement.

It would also prove to be their downfall. That film’s breakout success (as well as that of its bumbling yellow Minions) steered the studio toward craven greed with reckless abandon. “The Lorax,” “Despicable Me 2,” “Minions,” “The Secret Life of Pets” — their subsequent products have enough moments of charm and visual wit that only serve to highlight the creative bankruptcy around them. The movies prove considerably less memorable than their marketing campaigns; “Minions” was conceived in a $600 million orgy of cross-promotional publicity.

As a business model, it works. While they fall well short of, say, the average gross of a Pixar film ($634 million), none of them cost more than $76 million; none have grossed less than $348 million. Meanwhile, Studio Ghibli is all but out of business, and the latest film from Laika fell short of $50 million at the domestic box office. It’s like these people are on a profitable suicide mission to lower our standards for animated filmmaking, bit by little bit.

If that is their goal, then “Sing” is the Platonic ideal of an Illumination movie. It’s a profoundly soulless piece of work that shines a light on the mediocrity they foist upon the children of the world.

A jukebox musical for the age of “Carpool Karaoke,” our story begins in a city entirely populated by animals. And that’s where its resemblance to “Zootopia” ends, since that felt like a city designed by animals for animals. This is a perpetually sunny metropolis that looks like it was designed by the same committees that brought us outdoor malls. It’s the home of Buster Moon ( Matthew McConaughey ), a delusional koala who’s defined by his undying love for this business we call show. Buster was seduced by the stage when he was just a kid (or whatever they call baby koalas), and he refuses to abandon the theatre that he inherited from his father, even if audiences have done so en masse. “Wonder and magic don’t come easy,” he sighs.

But, our furry little hero has a plan! (It’s a terribly hypocritical plan that spits in the face of everything the character claims to admire about the arts, but it’s a plan). He’s going to hold a singing competition, since nothing preserves the wonder and magic of the theater like invitingamateurs to cover an assortment of disposable pop songs, presumably chosen for no other reason than the fact that Universal already owned the rights. (The selection includes an occasional something by Bowie or the Beatles; this movie winks at adults with real music the way that Pixar winks at adults with good writing.) It’s as though writer-director Garth Jennings watched “American Idol” and decided it was ground zero for the golden age of television.

However, Buster doesn’t really love the theater. He loves his theater, much in the same way as Hollywood studios don’t seem to love the movies so much as they do multiplexes. “Nobody wants to see the old shows,” the koala laments, but that doesn’t inspire him to change their minds or broker a compromise between art and commerce. On the contrary, it motivates him to sell out as hard as he can.

When Buster’s secretary (an ancient green iguana voiced by Jennings himself) accidentally drops her glass eye on the boss’ keyboard, the resulting typo sees the prize money spike from $1,000 to $100,000. The next morning, every animal in town is lined up on the sidewalk. It’s greed that first brings everyone together.

Jennings introduces his zoo-sized cast at such a whirlwind pace that kids won’t have time to blink, let alone lose interest. The symphony of one-note characters includes Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), a porcine housewife who just wants a brief respite from the exhaustion of raising 25 little piglets. There’s Johnny ( Taron Egerton ), a kid gorilla who would rather steal the spotlight than join his dad’s gang of thieves. There’s Ash ( Scarlett Johansson ), a punk-rock porcupine whose talent is undercut by her cheating boyfriend and bandmate. Meena (Tori Kelly), is a pathologically shy teenage elephant that can only sing in the shower, while Mike (Seth MacFarlane, further weaponizing his Sinatra shtick) is a gambling mouse who behaves like the adopted member of an actual rat pack. He talks too much, while the scantily clad female mouse for whom he thirsts doesn’t have a single line of dialogue (a sexist oversight that at least spares some poor actress from the indignity of having to voice the character).

The characters’ species seem to have been assigned at random, as the film almost never takes the animals’ unique qualities into account — the biggest animal has the smallest ego, the smallest animal has the biggest ego, and that’s about as deep as it goes. Despite its manic pacing, “Sing” doesn’t have time for nuance or feeling — how could it, when it’s squeezing in more than 65 brainless covers from the last four decades of popular music? (In a nod to its target audience, however, most were culled from the last five years.)

The film compensates by shearing its singers down to the bare minimum. Mike the mouse has an arched eyebrow to communicate his snide and smarmy persona. Johnny wears a jacket to suggest his gangster roots (you can almost hear the studio executives musing if that choice might be too polarizing). Buster looks like a koala. Rosita looks like a pig. In the rare instances where the movie dares to include more than one animal from the same species, the creatures are almost completely indistinguishable.

Nobody expected “Sing” to match the pathos or visual wit of “BoJack Horseman,” but it would have been nice for its characters to meet the depth of “Mr. Ed.” This pageant of kooky critters may aspire to be a kid-friendly Christopher Guest movie, but it’s too precise and predetermined to harness that kind of energy, and ends up cleaving more to the overstuffed, underwritten busyness of late-career Garry Marshall (R.I.P.). It’s as though Jennings took the stuff of a great children’s movie and surgically removed everything that made it warm and lovable, leaving behind a sticky residue of processed cuteness and raw marketability. Jennings is a talented director; it’s hard to imagine how the man behind “Son of Rambow” and a handful of the best music videos ever made (e.g. Blur’s “Coffee & TV” and Radiohead’s “Lotus Flower”) could make something so dim.

It’s a shame that “Sing” is such a bonfire of the inanities, because every cast member has a dynamite singing voice. From Johansson’s familiar husk to MacFarlane’s overly familiar croon, these performers often make the film as pleasant to listen to as it is painful to watch. Especially Egerton. He may have been a lot more fun as Eddie the Eagle than as Johnny the Gorilla, but the once and future Kingsman has a serious set of pipes.

It’s sadistic to force him to sing Sam Smith, or to waste Scarlett Johansson on “Call Me Maybe,” but the one original song will have you crying for the covers, and — in a classic case of terrible food and such small portions — it’s still disappointing that the musical performances are cut to ribbons. You hear them in 30-second snippets, like the movie is an iTunes preview for the soundtrack your kids will force you to buy when it’s over. How is it that none of the characters duet? That none of their plot lines meaningfully interact? Maybe that’s what sequels are for.

But if this pandering film is too busy singing to have much to say, there’s a semi-interesting idea or two amidst the noise. Perhaps the most palpable is the notion that some pop music is valuable because it’s generic, not despite it. Anything so universal is imbued with a certain power, but some of these subplots — Meena’s in particular — channel a measure of authentic, Walmart-approved wisdom about how one song can be uniquely internalized by an infinite number of people. “Firework” isn’t just a hit because it’s catchy; it also fits all of our lives as malleably as a magical pair of jeans. That chorus resonates as strongly with an overworked housewife as it does a nervous teenage girl. Not everyone has a great voice, “Sing” argues, but we all need to be heard.

READ MORE: ‘Storks’: How Looney Tunes Animation Meets the Coen Brothers’ ‘Raising Arizona’

So hear this: “Sing” is a film that’s designed to placate children rather than enrich or inspire them. Illumination’s target audience may be too young to know how awful their latest movie is, but they’ll never watch it when they grow older, they’ll never cherish it as a source of nostalgia. They’ll simply grow up expecting less of the movies, less of the world around them, and less of themselves. No big deal.

And hey, some of these characters are cute! And it’s fun to hear famous people sing. So what if the koala is running a carwash! It’s just a cartoon. Relax. That herky-jerky Laika stuff seems kinda weird, don’t you think? What the hell is a “Kubo,” anyway? “ How the Grinch Stole Christmas ?” Now those are words I’ve heard, in that order, before! “Despicable Me 3?” Sounds like an afternoon I won’t have to hire a babysitter. “The Secret Life of Pets 2?” What is that dog still not telling us?

Flash over substance. Flash over substance. Until the light is so bright that Illumination is all we can see.

“Sing” opens in theaters on December 21.

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DVD & Streaming
Animation , Comedy , Kids

Content Caution

In Theaters

December 21, 2016
Voices of Matthew McConaughey as Buster Moon; Reese Witherspoon as Rosita; Seth MacFarlane as Mike; Scarlett Johansson as Ash; John C. Reilly as Eddie Noodleman; Tori Kelly as Meena; Taron Egerton as Johnny; Nick Kroll as Gunter; Nick Offerman as Norman; Garth Jennings as Miss Matilda Crawly; Peter Serafinowicz as Marcus; Beck Bennett as Lance; Leslie Jones as Meena's Mother; Jay Pharoah as Meena's Grandfather; Jennifer Saunders as Miss Nana Noodleman; Jennifer Hudson as Young Nana Noodleman; Rhea Perlman as Judith

Home Release Date

March 21, 2017
Garth Jennings and Christophe Lourdelet

Distributor

Movie review.

Funny thing about dreams: Everyone has them, yet so few actually achieve them. At least not permanently.

Take Buster Moon, for instance. At the tender age of 6, the koala bear fell in love. The object of his ardor? The theater. Buster found himself mesmerized by the operatic prowess of one Nana Noodleman, a singer whose voice was a thing of captivating, wondrous beauty. So much so, in fact, that lil’ Buster decided right then and there that he would one day own the theater where he’d heard her sing.

One day years later—thanks to the hardworking support of his faithful father—Buster’s dream came true: He purchased the hallowed thespian establishment.

Alas, seemingly fulfilled dreams can be slippery things. And Buster’s mostly-ignored theater is now smack up against those proverbial hard times. He doesn’t have the cash flow to pay grumbling stage hands after the theater’s latest box office bomb. He can’t make mortgage payments, either. It looks as if Buster’s dream is on the verge of going to an early grave.

But necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. Or at least imitation. So Buster hatches a desperate brainstorm: stage a singing competition for everyone in his palm tree-dotted metropolis, a last-ditch attempt to generate interest in his failing venue.

“A singing competition?” his best friend (and Nana’s trust-fund coddled grandson), Eddie, says skeptically. “Who wants to see another one of those?” Buster remains undeterred: “Real-life talent,” he gushes grandly. “In real life!”

So Buster scrounges up his last $935 and instructs his long-suffering, one-eyed iguana assistant, Miss Matilda Crawley, to type up some brochures offering a cool grand to the winner of his competition. (He figures he can scrape up the other $65 somewhere .)

Miss Crawley dutifully types it all up. Then her one fake eye pops out on the keyboard, adding a couple of zeroes to the prize-money brochure—without her (or Buster) noticing—right before the office’s oscillating fan accidentally disperses the flyers throughout the city.

In a flash, the dreams of animals across town are suddenly, unexpectedly energized.

There’s Rosita, a housewife pig and mother of—wait for it: 25 piglets —whose endless domestic responsibilities and utterly self-absorbed workaday husband, Norman, leave her longing for something … more. Johnny (a stylish, leather-wearing gorilla) is being groomed by his gangster father to do more than just drive the getaway car after heists; but all Johnny wants to do is sing. Mike the mouse has a Sinatra-like voice as big as he is small, with an outsized rodent ego to match. Meena is a teenage elephant so shy she can barely even audition. And Ash is a punk rock porcupine whose boyfriend, Lance, just coldly left her for someone else.

All of these yearning, singing souls (along with scores of other mostly mammalian hopefuls) converge on Buster’s dilapidated old theater, American Idol -style, much to his surprised delight.

But a much bigger surprise awaits almost everyone when they discover that Buster’s prize package is actually a couple digits shy of what was promised on the brochure—a realization that threatens to cruelly crush all of their fragile dreams.

Positive Elements

Though it’s not a Disney film, Sing nevertheless requisitions the Mouse House’s perennial theme of persevering in the pursuit of your heart’s desire. We repeatedly hear the phrase, “Dream big dreams!” Meena’s father tells her, “Be confident!” Likewise, Buster tries to coach Meena through her crippling stage fright, telling the paralyzed pachyderm, “Do what you love. Then you won’t be afraid anymore. Because you’re actually doing it.”

For her part, Rosita has essentially zero support from her always-working, always-napping, never-cleaning husband. But she hangs in there, too, as do the rest of the film’s main characters.

Early on, Buster brims with confidence despite his misfortunes. He tells his bestie, “You know what’s good about hitting rock bottom, Eddie? There’s only one way to go, and that’s up.” Later, a distraught Buster learns that rock bottom is actually a lot lower than he initially thought, but Eddie brims with the same kind of upbeat optimism Buster once embodied. Other contestants seek to cheer Buster up, too.

Johnny has a tense relationship with his father, Marcus. But when the older gorilla sees his son performing on TV (after Marcus has been jailed) he breaks out of the clink and races across town just to hear Johnny sing and to tell his son, “I’m so proud of you!” Though Marcus’s simian jailbreak obviously isn’t a good thing, he willingly returns to his confinement after Johnny’s performance.

Spiritual Elements

Several songs include passing spiritual references. We hear a Sinatra-esque snippet of “Pennies from Heaven.” A version of Cat Stevens’ tune “The Wind” says, “Where I’ll end up, only God knows.” Bananarama’s song “Venus” includes the lines, “Goddess is on the mountaintop/Burning like a silver flame.” Meena belts out Leonard Cohen’s iconic “Hallelujah,” and we hear the lyric, “I’ll stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.”

Sexual Content

Three female rabbits wiggle and waggle their backsides suggestively, singing these actual lines from Nicki Minaj’s exceedingly racy song, “Anaconda”: “Oh my gosh, look at her butt.”

Though Ash is just a teenager, it’s implied that she and Lance are perhaps living together. At the very least, he has a key to her apartment, and she comes home one day to find him flirting with another pretty porcupine named Becky. Mike successfully woos a rich, pretty female mouse.

For the show, Rosita partners with a flamboyant, German-accented pig named Gunter. He wears a skin-tight leotard that Rosita comments shows a lot of “skin,” and he does something like a striptease to reveal his outfit. Rosita—a mother of 25, remember—isn’t as sensual as Gunter is. He coaches her, “Let the music take control of your body parts.” Rosita eventually takes his advice and dons a similarly “revealing” outfit for the duo’s performance, much to her husband’s wide-eyed porcine amazement and approval. (He gives her a big kiss afterward.)

Elsewhere, a leotard-clad frog has an effeminate accent. Visual gags involve Buster and Eddie wearing Speedo swimming suits as they wash and buff cars with their bodies. Eddie does a hip-thrusting dance.

Violent Content

Slapstick peril and pratfalls abound, but no one ever really gets hurt. A bursting water tank fills a building with fluid, momentarily trapping animals who look as if they might drown before the structure essentially explodes from the pressure and spills them (drenched, but otherwise unharmed) onto the street.

Several reckless car chases careen through the city, causing accidents. Menacing bears threaten to eat the mouse Mike (and nearly succeed twice).

Multiple characters fall from great heights and get accordingly banged around. A light rig crashes on one unfortunate animal, who (in an unexpected nod to realism) is taken away in an ambulance. When Ash the porcupine gets really worked up, she tends to throw her quills, which end up embedded in Buster’s face as well as in members of the audience. (A llama suffers the most harm.) A slug gets stepped on. Buster’s tossed out into the street.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear six exclamations of “oh my gosh,” two of “holy moly” and lone unfinished utterances of “oh my … ” and “what the …” Someone is said to be “artsy fartsy,” while another character is dubbed an “old fart.” Gunter calls someone a “total super-jerk dinkleschplatt.” Other name-calling includes “stupid,” “fool” and “bozos.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Several scenes take place in a swanky dance club that pictures various well-hoofed animals imbibing what look to be martinis and other mixed drinks. A joke is made about someone’s asthma inhaler being illicit drug paraphernalia.

Other Negative Elements

Buster repeatedly tries to dodge his financial obligations, including paying his stagehands and repaying a bank loan.

Marcus and his gang pull off two heists. The second of those lands that group of guerilla gorillas in jail—mostly because his son, Johnny, abandons his role as the getaway driver in order to go sing. Marcus cruelly tells Johnny (via a jail phone), “How did I end up with a son like you? You’re nothing like me. You never were, and you never will be.” Johnny then tries (unsuccessfully) to steal the supposed $100K prize money in order to post bail for his dad.

While busking with his saxophone, Mike accosts someone who says he doesn’t have any money to contribute. Mike shakes the poor man down and essentially steals a wad of cash from the distraught bystander.

Mike also gambles with a group of ill-tempered Russian bears who are apparently Mafioso. He’s grabbing a pile of cash he’s won from them when they notice an ace hidden in his jacket. The disgruntled grizzlies spend the balance of the movie trying to catch the cheating mouse, who’s often speeding away in a red, Ferrari-liked sports car that he financed after deceptively telling the bank he was on the verge of getting $100,000 (the prize money for the competition that he hasn’t actually won and which doesn’t actually exist).

A nervous animal in one scene loudly passes gas five or six times. There are also nose-blowing gags.

Sometimes you walk out of movies thinking, “Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting at all .”

Sing is not one of those movies.

Sing is exactly what you would expect if you’ve seen the trailer: a lighthearted and inspiring American Idol -style singing competition between animated, anthropomorphized animals. Just like that genre-defining show, each contestant here harbors dreams of singing, and each has the obligatory dramatic or hard-luck backstory. In the end, we’re invited to root for them all.

Like most animated flicks these days, there’s a whisker of bathroom humor and a hair of suggestive material. Animal flatulence jokes will no doubt get the little ones giggling, even as Mom and Dad roll their eyes a bit.

It’s all in the service of that Disney-style ideal of following your heart. Keep dreaming, the movie says. Keep hoping. Never give up, and never give up on your friends. Parents, of course, know that there may be some instances where such starry-eyed counsel is unrealistic. But then again, this is a movie about singing animals, so we probably don’t need to overthink that one.

One area we might not think to think about, however, is the music and musicians represented here. While none of the featured songs are terribly problematic, they do come from a broad range of secular performers with other material that is , such as Katy Perry, Sam Smith, Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj. And youngsters who imitatively Google the latter’s lyric “oh my gosh, look at her butt,” are in for decidedly not-so-innocent shock.

Still, that’s probably the biggest caveat for an otherwise fun film, one that inspires us to hold onto our dreams and that doesn’t assault us with a theater-full of age-inappropriate material along the way.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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7 stages of riley's life that could be explored in inside out 3, gordon liu's 10 best kung fu movies, ranked, sing is a narratively slight, but energetic animated musical romp that succeeds in staying light on its toes through its running time..

Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) is the owner of a music theater, having dreamt of going into show business ever since he was a young koala bear. Unfortunately, all of Buster's recent productions have been major commercial failures - prompting him to use his theater to host a singing competition, in the hopes that it will be successful enough to save his struggling business. Due to a mistake, however, the flyers for Buster's competition end up listing the grand prize as $100,000 (rather than $1,000, as Buster intended) and before long, nearly every animal in his city with dreams of superstardom has lined up to audition and try to win the "big prize".

Among the animals competing to become the next big musical sensation are Johnny (Taron Egerton), a gorilla who doesn't want to follow in his (criminal) father's footsteps; Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), a pig who still yearns to become a professional singer even now that she's a mother to more than two dozen piglets; Meena (Tori Kelly), an elephant with a terrific singing voice but terrible stage fright; Ash (Scarlett Johansson), a teenaged porcupine who's long served as the backup singer to her boyfriend; and Mike (Seth MacFarlane), a mouse who can croon like there's no tomorrow, but is too cocky for his own good. It's thus up to Buster to bring all of these musical talents together and find the money that he needs to make both their and his dreams come true.

Buster Moon addressing the singing contestants in Sing

The second original animated offering from Illumination Entertainment in 2016, Sing is a jukebox musical that blends the irreverent cartoon humor that the studio has become known for (thanks to movies such as Despicable Me , Minions and The Secret Life of Pets ), with an array of popular tunes and Billboard-topping hits that span the 1980s to the 2010s. At the core of the film is a sturdy, but conventional and simple story about the importance of perseverance in pursuing your passions and not losing sight of what truly matters as you chase after your dreams. Sing is a narratively slight, but energetic animated musical romp that succeeds in staying light on its toes throughout its running time.

Written and directed by Garth Jennings, Sing resembles Jennings' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film adaptation and his movie Son of Rambow in the way that it blends idiosyncratic humor and heart. Each of the film's main players gets a subplot with a predictable, but nevertheless fully-realized payoff - and though most every one of the film's story threads reaches a clearly telegraphed conclusion, Sing keeps things interesting by continuously hopping around from one character plotline to another. As indicated earlier, Sing doesn't have a layered story (especially not compared to other recent animated films with all, or nearly-all, animal casts such as Zootopia and Finding Dory ), but it makes up for that by maintaining a strong sense of forward momentum.

Buster Moon, the koala,sits behind his desk

The quality of animation in Sing is similarly a notch below the recent offerings from animation powerhouses Disney and Pixar, though it's solid in its own right. Sing benefits from gentle (animal) character designs and a pleasant (if soft) color scheme in this respect, giving rise to a playful cartoon world - if one that's less expressive than the (zany) universes of Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets , too. The most entertaining sequences in the film are easily those in which animals offer their renditions of hit pop songs and the occasional original tune (most notably, Scarlett Johansson's 'Set It All Free'), giving rise to a nonstop parade of animal-related gags. Most of the jokes and musical performances that Sing throws at the wall stick when all is said and done, though they don't advance the overarching story as well as the (generally, more impressively-staged) musical numbers from the best cartoon musicals released in recent memory.

Sing 's animals are all based on familiar human character tropes (the moody teenager, the stay-at-home mom with career aspirations, and so on) rather than have unique three-dimensional personalities themselves, but they're plucky and quirky enough to not just come off solely as cookie-cutter characters either. The enthusiastic performances of the film's voice cast helps make up the difference in this respect, especially when it comes to Matthew McConaughey as the (overly) optimistic Buster Moon. Much of Buster's never-say-die attitude and gumption is sold by McConaughey's vocal performance more than how the character is written, making the Oscar-winner (arguably) more essential to the success of Sing than he was to the animated Kubo and the Two Strings earlier this year.

The main characters of Sing posing together on stage

Scarlett Johansson and Reese Witherspoon deliver solid vocal performances (speaking and singing alike) of their own in Sing , though Taron Egerton and Seth MacFarlane are the bigger standouts here - as is Garth Jennings as the running joke of a character that is Karen Crawly, Buster's elderly (and wayward) lizard assistant. Moviegoers may also recognize the distinct vocals of people like Tori Kelly, John C. Reilly, Leslie Jones and Rhea Perlman (among others) behind the supporting animal characters featured in Sing , many of whom succeed in leaving an impression even while making only brief (animated) cameos here.

Sing comfortably occupies a middle-ground on the scale of Illumination Entertainment's animated offerings to date, as its characters and setting aren't as memorable (or wacky) as those in Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets - yet at the same time, it boasts a sturdier narrative and structure than Minions . While the movie doesn't quite equal the sum of its parts (great star-studded cast, a writer/director with a distinct comedic voice), the final result is solid all the same. There may not be much more to Sing than a series of jokes based around animals performing pop songs, but that same light-heartedness makes for some welcome counter-programming to many of the other films playing in theaters this winter holiday season.

Sing is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It is 108 minutes long and is Rated PG for some rude humor and mild peril.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

Sing is an animated musical comedy directed by Garth Jennings. It follows Buster Moon, a koala voiced by Matthew McConaughey, who hosts a singing competition to save his failing theater. The film features an ensemble cast including Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, and Taron Egerton, portraying various animal characters with dreams of stardom. Released in 2016, it combines humor and heartfelt moments through its vibrant musical performances.

Movie Reviews
3 star movies

‘Sing’ – Film Review

It’s The X Factor with animals, starring Matthew McConaughey and Scarlett Johansson

For the first few  minutes of Sing , you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re watching a sequel to one of last year’s best animated movies, Zootropolis . All creatures great and small are commuting to offices, mostly shirted but pantless, politely not eating  each other. Unlike Zootropolis , which wove subtle, intelligent social commentary into the comedy, Sing swiftly makes  it clear that it’s not here for anything other than a good time – and a good time it has.

There’s the thinnest suggestion of a plot to  justify what’s really merely  a staging of The X Factor  with cuter mammals. Matthew McConaughey voices a koala who nurtures dreams of being  a big theatre producer but is running his business into the ground. He comes up with  an idea to make his name by staging a talent show that will give the winner a mediocre prize of $1,000. Thanks to  a mishap by his ancient assistant Miss Crawly – a glass-eyed iguana, voiced  by director Garth Jennings  – who adds an additional  two zeroes to the flyer, huge crowds turn up with the expectation of becoming rich.

They include a bored pig housewife (Reese Witherspoon), a gorilla who doesn’t want to  join his dad’s criminal gang (Taron Egerton), a dark teenage porcupine (Scarlett Johansson) and a very shy elephant (American singer Tori Kelly). Which of them will be victorious? Will the show be a hit? Thanks  to character development too meagrely eked out across a large cast, there’s not much reason to invest in the answers to these questions. Yet somehow, out of nowhere, it finds a complete delight of an ending. Jennings hasn’t made a movie since 2007’s wonderful Son Of Rambow and it’s not until the final 30 minutes that he finds  his feet again. His finale has emotional payoffs slickly edited into a big, rousing supply of song and dance. It remains low on substance, but all concerns about a lack of smart subtext fly out the window when you’re enjoying the spectacle of a  pig vamping to Taylor Swift  while dressed as some sort of disco Batgirl.

‘Sing Sing’ Stages a Play in Prison — and Makes a Case for Healing Power of Art

By David Fear

You do not meet John Whitfield, known to friends and enemies alike by his nickname Divine G, as a person convicted of a crime. You are introduced to him onstage as a performer, bringing a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream to a close as an audience of fellow incarcerated men applaud. It’s a small but crucial detail, and helps set the stage, literally and otherwise, for what Sing Sing is aiming to do. A prison drama less interested in crime and punishment than in catharsis and the creative power of theater, director Greg Kwedar’s chronicle of how the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program affects its participants wants you to focus on the humanity on display over everything else. The titular correctional institution is merely the location of the proscenium. The play’s the thing, and before you think of those treading the boards as “prisoners,” it demands that you view them as people. (It opens in New York on July 12th, and goes wide in August.)

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Film Review: ‘Sing’

The studio responsible for 'Despicable Me' and 'The Secret Life of Pets' outdoes itself with this catchy jukebox musical.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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'Sing' Review: And You Thought 'American Idol' Was a Zoo

If it weren’t for the four little Minions who flex their pipes at the opening of “Sing,” you wouldn’t necessarily know that the massively entertaining jukebox musical that follows hails from the same studio that brought you “Despicable Me” and “The Secret Life of Pets.” The story of an underdog koala who concocts a singing competition as a last-ditch attempt to save his over-extended theater, “Sing” could just as easily be the work of Pixar, DreamWorks, or Walt Disney Animation Studios. (To wit, more than a few savvy parents will probably pass this off as the “Zootopia” sequel their kids have been wanting.) But for Illumination Entertainment , “Sing” is a game-changer, underscoring why company founder Chris Meledandri is the hottest name in animation today.

Both “Sing” and “Pets” sprung from original ideas hatched by Meledandri, but unlike the latter (which has earned $789 million worldwide to date), “Sing” takes place in a world entirely populated by animals. Whereas “Zootopia” cleverly delved into the dynamics of such an arrangement, “Sing” takes this interspecies arrangement for granted and wastes no time trying to explain the logistics: The story may as well be set among humans, only the characters are much cuter as critters (and yet, if there’s one area that Illumination seriously needs to improve, it’s character design).

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Like all of Illumination’s movies, “Sing” isn’t shy about recycling clichés from other animated movies, although it’s surprising that writer-director Garth Jennings ’ wobbly script (which masks its shortcomings with a steady stream of jokes) ignores the most obvious one: Rather than suggesting that what Buster needs to do is put on a really personal show, it reinforces his decision to sell out and host an amateur singing competition instead. But then, we live in the era of “American Idol,” and there’s no point lecturing those who believe in the illusion of natural-born talent and instant discovery on the importance of hard work. Why write your own music when there are so many catchy, if disposable pop songs you could be covering instead? (Still, if there’s any justice, the Dave Bassett-supplied original number “Set It All Free” will be the one audiences come away singing.)

Due to a slight miscommunication with his longtime assistant, Miss Crawly (a dotty old chameleon whom Jennings voices himself), 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. What follows is a kid-friendly riff on Broadway’s “A Chorus Line,” in which a wildly diverse batch of naturally talented singers show up to audition, offering Jennings the chance to delve into each of their surprisingly deep personal lives. Animation allows the film to zip along at five times the pace of a live-action movie, compressing teenage relationship troubles (as experienced by Ash, Scarlett Johansson’s emotionally vulnerable porcupine), marital doldrums ( Reese Witherspoon plays Rosita, an overworked pig saddled with 25 kids and an exhausted hubby), and unreasonable parental pressure (“Kingsman’s” Taron Egerton is Johnny, a gorilla forced to take a stand against his dad’s criminal lifestyle in order to follow his own dreams) into vignettes that might normally take far longer to unfold.

While there are no profound life lessons to be found in these subplots, Jennings and his cast manage to deliver a steady supply of laughs, while respecting one of Illumination’s core principles: It’s OK to be silly, which is especially true of the behavior to be found backstage, where a Teutonic attention hog (Nick Kroll, doing his best Flula Borg impression) and a group of J-pop pups threaten to steal the show. The auditions themselves are a quick-cut flurry of singer-to-song mismatch gags (three bunnies take a crack at “Baby Got Back,” a snail covers Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind”), making for a side-splitting sequence that represents a nearly unfathomable amount of work for music supervisor Jojo Villanueva and Universal’s legal team — who also had to get clearances on hits by Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Frank Sinatra (the latter crooned by Seth MacFarlane, no stranger to animation). The “Family Guy” creator has the perfect voice for Mike, a mouse with an ego big enough for an elephant, while Grammy-nominated newcomer Tori Kelly plays, Meena, a mousy pachyderm trying to work up the nerve to perform in front of a crowd.

Just when you think you’ve figured out how Buster will raise the prize money (Jennifer Hudson and Jennifer Saunders split the role of retired theater diva Nana Noodleman) and who will win it, Jennings’ script takes a spectacularly unexpected turn, humbling Buster and his woolly enabler Eddie (John C. Reilly), who hilariously redeem themselves by swallowing their pride and washing cars. But the show must go on, and “Sing” launches itself into the stratosphere with a radically reconceived version of Buster’s talent contest, in which multiple subplots coalesce as each of the principal characters gets his or her moment in the spotlight, each one more impressive than the last.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 11, 2016. Running time: 108 MIN.

Production: (Animated) A Universal Pictures release and presentation, in association with Dentsu, Fuji Television Network, of a Chris Meledandri production. Producers: Meledandri, Janet Healy.
Crew: Director, writer: Garth Jennings. Co-director: Christophe Lourdelet. Camera (color, HD). Editor: Gregory Perler.
With: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson, John C. Reilly, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly, Jennifer Saunders, Jennifer Hudson, Garth Jennings, Peter Serafinowicz, Nick Kroll, Beck Bennett, Jay Pharoah, Nick Offerman, Leslie Jones, Rhea Perlman, Laraine Newman, Adam Buxton, Brad Morris, Bill Farmer.

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‘sing sing’ review: colman domingo shines in a subtle portrait of a prison arts program.

The actor flexes his range in Greg Kwedar's feature about incarcerated men trying to stage a theater production inside their maximum security correctional facility.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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A moving celebration of art's redemptive power, Sing Sing draws its estimable emotional resonance from a never better Colman Domingo and equally impressive ensemble players.

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'Sing Sing' review: Phenomenal Colman Domingo anchors prison drama
Movie review. Winner of the best film award at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, Greg Kwedar's "Sing Sing" is a gentle reminder of the power of art to transform lives.Taking ...
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When you see the prisoners sitting in a circle warming up, Sean (Dino) Johnson, Cornell (Nate) Alston, Camillo (Carmine) LoVacco and David (Dap) Giraudy are essentially playing versions of themselves.
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He allows his camera to slip and slide around the set pieces, including a rooftop escape route that would do King Kong proud, and knows how to stage the singing acts, dramatic lighting and all. But all this is just a build-up to " Sing's" crowning glory of a 30-minute finale. Just when Buster's plans all go kaput in a sequence that ...
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Sing. PG Released Dec 21, 2016 1h 48m Kids & Family Musical Comedy Animation. TRAILER for Sing: Blu-Ray Trailer 1. List. 71% Tomatometer 189 Reviews. 73% Audience Score 25,000+ Ratings. Dapper ...
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He's a devotee of theater, loves to act and read plays, and approaches it all with the quiet fervor of somebody who found religion behind bars. Some of the most memorable images in "Sing Sing' focus on Domingo's face in closeup as Divine G performs, thinks, or silently observes others. The prison is a cold, cruel place full of violent men whose ...
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The story exists solely to string together a series of song-and-dance performances. Full Review | Original Score: 2/10 | Dec 5, 2020. Sing is one of the biggest surprises of 2016, not because it ...
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1. The Animation It's not like Illumination is the only movie that uses this kind of animation. Didney, Dreamworks, basically almost every company. But the thing I have with this movie on the animation front is the assets. They re-use the same models over and over again, they barely bother to even make them look good.
Sing (2016)
9/10. Sing is the most enjoyable of the musical computer-animated movies we've seen this year! tavm 21 December 2016. This is the third computer-animated movie in a row that features actual singing by the characters after Trolls and Moana.
Movie Review: 'Sing Sing' cheers the power of art inside a maximum
"Sing Sing" follows the well-trodden path of a motley group of amateur actors as they come together to rehearse and put on a play in front of their peers. It's different this time, though, because everyone is a captive audience. The movie is set inside a maximum security prison in New York state, highlighting a real-life rehabilitation program that works to offer inmates an artistic ...
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The Bottom Line A veritable farmyard of fun. By way of contrast, in Sing there's no reason within the story for one of its major characters, Buster Moon (voiced by Matthew McConaughey ), to be a ...
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Set in a world like ours but entirely inhabited by animals, Sing stars Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey), a dapper Koala who presides over a once-grand theater that has fallen on hard times. Buster is an eternal optimist — okay, maybe a bit of a scoundrel — who loves his theater above all and will do anything to preserve it. Now facing the crumbling of his life's ambition, he has one ...
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Sing is exactly what you would expect if you've seen the trailer: a lighthearted and inspiring American Idol-style singing competition between animated, anthropomorphized animals. Just like that genre-defining show, each contestant here harbors dreams of singing, and each has the obligatory dramatic or hard-luck backstory.
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"Sing Sing," a genuinely moving highlight of 2024, makes most of the other dramas we've seen this year look like phonies. It has a few elements, a few moments, that edge into softer ...
Review: 'Sing Sing,' the best movie of 2024 so far ...
In theaters Friday, Aug. 2. Such a ridiculous play provides needed comic relief, as "Sing Sing" is a serious movie that touches on criminal justice and prison reform issues and contains several riveting, heartfelt performances. "Sing Sing" is also a celebration of the creative expressiveness of live theater and its possibilities.
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Sing is a narratively slight, but energetic animated musical romp that succeeds in staying light on its toes throughout its running time. Written and directed by Garth Jennings, Sing resembles Jennings' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film adaptation and his movie Son of Rambow in the way that it blends idiosyncratic humor and heart.
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Like all of Illumination's movies, "Sing" isn't shy about recycling clichés from other animated movies, ... Film Review: 'Sing' Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special ...
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1 hour 45 minutes. Colman Domingo plays Divine G, a mellow man who has structured his decades in prison around the group. Along with his buddy Mike Mike (Sean San José), Divine G finds purpose in ...
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R Now Playing 1h 45m Drama. TRAILER for Sing Sing: Trailer 1. List. 97% Tomatometer 102 Reviews. 91% Audience Score 100+ Ratings. Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he ...