SING (Garth Jennings). 108 minutes. Opens Wednesday (December 21). See listing. Rating: NNN
The first venture into CG animation from English director Garth Jennings whose live-action work includes The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy and Son Of Rambow Sing is an animated jukebox musical stuffed to bursting with animated jukebox musicalness.
Its a movie about putting on a show about putting on a show, and it is so determined to tick every box in the entertainment checklist that it winds up adding new boxes so it can tick them off, too.
You know the premise: down to his last nickel, bright-eyed impresario Buster Moon who happens to be a koala voiced by Matthew McConaughey tries to save his beloved theatre by staging a singing competition, which attracts contestants voiced by the likes of Reese Witherspoon (as a pig with two dozen children), Scarlett Johansson (a punk porcupine), Taron Egerton (a gorilla and sometime criminal) and, um, Seth MacFarlane (as a crooner mouse).
For a while, its sheer immensity and the chutzpah of its American Animal Idol conceit will keep you watching just to see how many plates director/writer Jennings can set to spinning. Turns out that with computer animation, you can just make more plates.
And eventually, it all becomes a bit much: too many characters, too many songs, too many near disasters, too many unnecessary action sequences.
At an hour and a half, it would be exhausting at nearly two, I felt like I was being enthusiastically beaten with large bags of sugar.
***
Never count out an animated feature from a major studio especially one that can trot out Oscar winners Witherspoon and McConaughey in the marketing materials. And Universal positioning this as its big Christmas picture means Academy voters will be saturated with advertising everywhere they turn.
