Garth Jennings
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This latest effort from Illumination Entertainment falls in line with its “Despicable Me” and “The Secret Life of Pets” franchises.
Sing is, of course, the big family-friendly holiday movie for this Christmas, hoping to capitalize on audience goodwill built up from the Despicable Me franchise and The Secret Life of Pets.
The producers of the animated family flick "Sing" really, really want you to know it was made by Illumination Entertainment, the same surging animation outfit behind the "Despicable Me" movies.
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.”
There is use of a non-lethal gun (you’ll understand when you see it – otherwise it would be a spoiler), erratic driving, angry villain threats for killing/death/dying that would be compared to “Zootopia level intense,” electrocution, and mild peril with a near-death experience (also pretty predictable).
The gastropod sounds great, while the latter looks like Gazelle from “Zootopia.”
Even the transitions from one scene to the next has a pop song playing, which makes even less sense considering the Sing universe is a more robust Zootopia .
But once you listen to the songs, you gotta see the movie, which the roughly two-year-old did, and it joined in the heavy rotation in our house that included Moana (2016) and Zootopia (2016).
There was nothing particularly special about it, especially given that the superior Finding Dory , Kubo and the Two Strings , and Zootopia came out the same year.
A kind of jukebox musical set in a world populated by oddball anthropomorphic animals (released just a few months after “Zootopia”), it is charming and upbeat.
The mix of music and kitchen sink drama, plus Irishness, might make The Commitments the obvious comparator, but think more in the vein of Son Of Rambow, with music instead of movies.
There’s a touch of Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind or Garth Jennings’s Son of Rambow in the band’s attempts to reproduce the high-gloss sheen of Russell Mulcahy’s pop videos in a Dublin backstreet, armed only with a silk scarf, a cowboy outfit and an abundance of eyeliner.
El impulso cómico para mantener la atención de los niños proviene de la diferencia de tamaño de los animales y cómo las cualidades físicas de éstos afectan su desempeño en el escenario; por otra parte, el público adulto encontrará sutiles guiños al musical de Broadway, A Chorus Line, y a las películas The Band Wagon (1953) y Sunsent Boulevard (1950), aunque sin la carga sombría y desesperanzadora que Vincente Minnelli y Billy Wilder le impregnaron a sus respectivos filmes.
One Battle After Another (2025)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Characters
…clad only in a dressing gown, like The Dude in The Big Lebowski or Arthur Dent in The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy…
But the British writer-director shares directing credit with Christophe Lourdelet, who worked on the art for “Minions” and “Despicable Me 2,” and Jennings’ warmth complements Lourdelet’s visual zaniness.
Sing is the latest from Illumination Entertainment, which also brought us the double bummers The Secret Life of Pets and Minions.
It would probably help, though, if you thought of "Sing" as more akin to Illumination's " Minions " -- the 2015 flyweight "Despicable Me" spinoff -- than to that original "Despicable Me."
While Jennings’ presence hasn’t quite led to a Pixar-level bump in quality, this is a clear step up from the likes of The Secret Life Of Pets and the endless Minions-related movies.
The two films from Illumination, the animation studio of “Despicable Me” and “Minions,” derive a lot of their appeal from a karaoke game of pairing a chart-topping hit with the appropriate anthropomorphic animal.
Still, this franchise from Illumination (the outfit behind "Despicable Me" and "Minions" ) doesn't really aspire to be anything more than fun, and on the most basic level, delivers just enough of it, especially for the pre-puberty demo.
The premise is American Idol with talking (and singing) animals, but that's just the starting point for a film that borrows cheerfully from many sources: Baz Luhrmann meets Beatrix Potter, with a healthy dose of The Muppet Show and of classic Warner Brothers backstage musicals such as 42nd Street.
The funny animal jukebox musical cartoon has a long and honorable history, dating back to, for example, the 1936 animated short “I Love to Singa.”
In fact, this could well be a movie produced in the city of Zootopia, a light comedy to entertain its inhabitants — their Pitch Perfect, perhaps.
Even if we didn’t have La La Land in such close proximity, the movie would still probably look like the least inspired stretches of Zootopia and Pitch Perfect smashed together.
It my seem flippant to compare “Sing” to another Universal property, “Pitch Perfect,” but in many ways its truly an apt and positive comparison.
"Pitch Perfect" was released at the height of the "singing competition" genre, one that had been popularized (and quickly run into the ground) by "Glee" — itself a thin satire riding on the coattails of popular reality shows like "American Idol" and "The X Factor."
Centuries later, we got the television show Glee , the film series Pitch Perfect , and bands like Pentatonix who take the songs we know and repurpose them in new and mostly exciting ways.
Miss Crawly is an undeniable descendant of Dody Goodman's scatterbrained principal's assistant Blanche in 1978's "Grease," and Jennings gives himself most of the funniest lines and situations."Sing"…
Some are merely snatches and phrases (hello pan-pipe theme from Once Upon a Time in America ) which might have been free under the terms of fair use, but still, the music alone must have represented a big chunk of the budget, along with the above-the-line talent’s fees and the computing costs that went into rendering the film's many dazzling traveling shots.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Directed by Daniel Scheinert
influenced by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Themes
The film has quite a bit in common with “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” with its penchant for absurdity and use of science fiction to cut to the center of how stupidly random the universe can be.
At first glance the scenario is similar to Garth Jennings’s Son of Rambow , about two boys in the 1980s remaking First Blood.
On one hand, Abrams had crafted an endearing "Son of Rambow"-style period piece, bottling that childhood thrill of cinematic discovery like so many summer lightning bugs, while at the same time, he feels compelled to turn it into something bigger.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
Directed by James Gunn
influenced by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Once at home with Ego you can't help but notice the many notable references to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with Ego resembling an even more unhinged Zaphod Beeblebrox.
For a certain personality type, filmmaking is a contagious compulsion, and it’s entertaining to see how the bug bit Spielberg — although a dose of irreverence might’ve been more effective, leaning into how endearingly clumsy those efforts were (à la “Son of Rambow”).
Given the number of movies from Super 8 to Son of Rambow, that focus on the joy of kids and their friends with a camera, it sure is fun to see Spielberg go ahead and make one of these.
Arrival (2016)
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
influenced by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Well, unless they are sly infiltrators of the flesh, they will probably go for the kind of boastful, get-a-load-of-us craft that was immortalized by Douglas Adams in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
But once you listen to the songs, you gotta see the movie, which the roughly two-year-old did, and it joined in the heavy rotation in our house that included Moana (2016) and Zootopia (2016).
Time Bandits (1981)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
influenced The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Themes
He’s the hapless milquetoast Arthur Dent of a story strongly resembling The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in form and tone.
Time Bandits alludes to influences as diverse as Through the Looking Glass and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but the style is pure Gilliam, with an emphasis on "handmade" practical effects and judicious use of wide angles when a subject needs to be especially grotesque (kudos, incidentally, to George Harrison and Denis O'Brien's Handmade Films for ultimately backing Gilliam's vision).
Kevin Smith even put a very risque spin on the concept with Zack And Miri Make A Porno .
No, that's not a spoiler as this isn't Dancer in the Dark.