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Sing 2
From the "If You Liked the First One" school of sequel making comes Sing 2, a splashy and brassy sequel to the surprise hit of 2016 that provides solid entertainment, despite an overly complex screenplay.
This 2021 animated musical pretty much begins where the first one left off. Koala Bear Buster Moon (voiced by Matthew McConaughey) is enjoying a modicum success with the musical animal stars he discovered in the first film, but has decided he wants to expand and approaches a theater producing fox named Jimmy Crystal (voiced by Bobby Cannavale) about producing an outer space musical that Buster has written. Crystal agrees as lonh as Buster can convince former rock and roll lion Clay Calloway (voiced by Bono) to appear in the show.
Buster, Rosita the Pig (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), Johnny the Ape (voiced by Taron Egerton), Ash the Porcupine (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), Meena the elephant (Tori Kelly), and Gunter the Pig (voiced by Nick Kroll) arrive at Mr. Crystal's theater and discover, among other things, that Johnny can't dance and must take a ballet class, a paralyzing fear of heights might cost Rosita her part, that Meena can't do a love scene with an arrogant bull (voiced by Eric Andre), and Mr. Crystal's spoiled brat daughter, Porsha (voiced by Halsey) wants Rosita's part in the show.
Director, screenwriter, and the voice of Miss Calloway, Garth Jennings, works very hard here not to just duplicate what we saw in the first film. Several characters from the first film don't appear for whatever reason. The only one I really missed was Mike the Mouse voiced by Seth McFarlane, but Buster's motivations didn't really fly with this reviewer. He had a nice successful theater going at the end of the first film and it didn't really make sense that he would want to go to this brand new theater where he would have to kow-tow to this wolf Mr. Crystal and give up all the creative control he had at his own theater.
If the truth be known, all of this went out of my head as, once again, Jennings has staged some of the most intoxicating and entertaining musical numbers created for an animated musical. From the opening "Let's Get Crazy" led by Egerton and Witherspoon", Egerton and Kelly's "There's Nothing Holding Me Back", Egerton's "A Sky Full of Stars", Bono and Johansson dueting on "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for' and my personal favorite, Kelly and Pharrell Williams teaming up on "I Say a Little Prayer".
Jennings puts a lot of care into production values, with special nods to art direction and sound. There is also standout voice work from McConaughey, Witherspoon, Cannavale, and Chelsea Perretti as Crystal's secretary. There's a slow spot here and there, but solid entertainment for a sequel.
From the "If You Liked the First One" school of sequel making comes Sing 2, a splashy and brassy sequel to the surprise hit of 2016 that provides solid entertainment, despite an overly complex screenplay.
This 2021 animated musical pretty much begins where the first one left off. Koala Bear Buster Moon (voiced by Matthew McConaughey) is enjoying a modicum success with the musical animal stars he discovered in the first film, but has decided he wants to expand and approaches a theater producing fox named Jimmy Crystal (voiced by Bobby Cannavale) about producing an outer space musical that Buster has written. Crystal agrees as lonh as Buster can convince former rock and roll lion Clay Calloway (voiced by Bono) to appear in the show.
Buster, Rosita the Pig (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), Johnny the Ape (voiced by Taron Egerton), Ash the Porcupine (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), Meena the elephant (Tori Kelly), and Gunter the Pig (voiced by Nick Kroll) arrive at Mr. Crystal's theater and discover, among other things, that Johnny can't dance and must take a ballet class, a paralyzing fear of heights might cost Rosita her part, that Meena can't do a love scene with an arrogant bull (voiced by Eric Andre), and Mr. Crystal's spoiled brat daughter, Porsha (voiced by Halsey) wants Rosita's part in the show.
Director, screenwriter, and the voice of Miss Calloway, Garth Jennings, works very hard here not to just duplicate what we saw in the first film. Several characters from the first film don't appear for whatever reason. The only one I really missed was Mike the Mouse voiced by Seth McFarlane, but Buster's motivations didn't really fly with this reviewer. He had a nice successful theater going at the end of the first film and it didn't really make sense that he would want to go to this brand new theater where he would have to kow-tow to this wolf Mr. Crystal and give up all the creative control he had at his own theater.
If the truth be known, all of this went out of my head as, once again, Jennings has staged some of the most intoxicating and entertaining musical numbers created for an animated musical. From the opening "Let's Get Crazy" led by Egerton and Witherspoon", Egerton and Kelly's "There's Nothing Holding Me Back", Egerton's "A Sky Full of Stars", Bono and Johansson dueting on "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for' and my personal favorite, Kelly and Pharrell Williams teaming up on "I Say a Little Prayer".
Jennings puts a lot of care into production values, with special nods to art direction and sound. There is also standout voice work from McConaughey, Witherspoon, Cannavale, and Chelsea Perretti as Crystal's secretary. There's a slow spot here and there, but solid entertainment for a sequel.