Sing 2
Barely avoids breaking any glass.
When I rate films in this thread, I sometimes think I may be a bit too generous with my scores, there is a reason however in that I usually tend to stick to reviewing films that I enjoy, as I can’t form my thoughts properly if I’m nodding off mid film, so perhaps this film is the perfect oddity as it’s not exactly a good film but I still kind of like it anyway, it is perhaps my guilty pleasure Illumination film.
First off, visually it looks great, it’s clear that technology has advanced so much that Illumination’s somewhat reduced budget, compared to other AAA animation studios, doesn’t downgrade their films in this area, shame they don’t spend that tiny bit more on fixing the script.
The soundtrack is fine, as someone who grew up in the 2000s/2010s I can enjoy certain pop songs (although a lot of them are trash) luckily the film usually picks ones that are catchy enough, often relegating the rubbish to be buzzed out by Mr Crystal though not all of the songs in that scene were bad, I did find the one with the flamingos to be catchy.
The singing has every bit the potential to get on my wick but surprisingly I didn’t find it cringeworthy, at worst it was a bit groan worthy but it’s not too bad probably because the songs picked tend to be some of the better tracks of modern pop music, at least in the mainstream anyway, one thing I will say though is that it doesn’t seem like any effort was made to cover the songs, I could be mistaken but when the characters start singing, it seems as if their voice changes, they try to cover this up by picking songs that sound like the character’s voice but the discrepancy still shows.
With regards to whether or not the songs fit the scene or not, it varies wildly, some of them seem to fit the scene ok enough while on the other hand, we have Soy Yo playing during an escape sequence, like, what does this have to do with the team literally running for their lives?
The script here is where the issues really start to glare, admittedly it is a step up from most Illumination films so I’ll start with what works, the plotline with Clay Calloway having to come to terms with the death of his wife and how him struggling to do so left him reclusive, the way this is done is surprisingly mature by Illumination’s standards, also Johnny gets a pretty neat plotline about how he is made to study under the “world’s greatest choreographer” only for said choreographer’s methods to be too intense to actually work without learning the basics first, furthermore Rosita’s difficulty with her sudden fear of heights gets a really good conclusion in the finale, though it would have been better from a character development perspective if it was an issue that plagued her all her life rather than just popping up out of the blue.
The bad plot points though, they are bad, Porsha gets the worst of them, it starts off ok with her being given the lead role in the show by her nepotistic dad Mr Crystal even though she can’t act to save her life, eventually though, Buster Moon asks if she can swap roles with Rosita only for her to accuse Buster of sacking her, from a plot perspective I can get why she acted the way she did, her being a billionaire’s daughter and all, but where it gets really stupid is when she gets over getting recast simply because Mrs Crawly said for her to, also, without any explanation, she now hates her father because……… he’s evil? honestly it probably only needed one scene to justify this complete flip of Porsha’s morals but it’s not there, also it’s really dumb that Buster Moon manages to get the show to play at Mr Crystal’s theatre without permission, like I get how he got his own team to join in but how on earth did he convince all the other cast members?
Also it has to be said that Buster Moon repeats the exact same mistake as he made in the first film, lying his way to the top, although the series keeps rewarding his endless porkies so I guess he has a reason to keep making them.
Luckily the climax is probably the best bit, it’s clear at least that creatively, this is a massive step up over how the first film’s finale took part in a broken down theatre, here however it is far more exciting, the best thing is how it concludes three of the plotlines in a way that actually works, it also helps that it’s visually great, I’d say that the finale is the only excellent Illumination scene not reserved by Despicable Me 1, in fact I think that it’s this scene that is why I still like the film enough to rewatch in spite of it’s flaws.
Overall I do like this film when it is actually good but it’s issues are so glaring that I struggle to say that it’s all that good, overall I guess I can call it good? with a question mark, Mario Movie notwithstanding (I haven’t seen it yet) this is the second best Illumination film, but that is not saying much overall.
6/10
