First Take: Sing 2 - unleash the rants

SYNOPSIS:  Buster Moon and his friends must persuade reclusive rock star Clay Calloway to join them for the opening of a new show.

A few years ago the folks at Illumination let Garth Jennings (co-founder of Hammer and Tongs, as well as the man behind 2005′s Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy and Son of Rambow) have a go at directing his own animated film- the result was 2016′s Sing, a film which was OK, but had some issues in its execution. Now, one mega franchise later, and after another lengthy Covid delay, it’s in UK cinemas. Sadly the same issues that plagued the first one are evident in the sequel.

This is absolutely no fault of Garth Jennings, as he knows these characters well, taking the experience he gained working with Illumination on the original and creating a bigger, more expansive plot, but it’s literally a beat for beat remake of the first one with a few Bono-shaped changes here and there (we’ll get to him later)- it’s a perfectly serviceable 1 hour 49 minutes, but the pacing has issues, the U certificate is quite frankly wrong (should’ve been a PG on account of a sequence involving a paintball gun), but in a blaze of positivity, the animation quality has got better. In the other technical points, Joby Talbot’s score comes in just when it is needed, which is good, but that soundtrack once again shows the kinds of rights Illumination can secure.

Performance wise, almost everybody from Sing 1 is back. Taron Egerton, Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johannson, Nick Kroll, Tori Kelly, Jennifer Saunders, Nick Offerman and Peter Serafinowicz all return from the 2016 original, and they all do some decent work as usual- joining them for the sequel is Illumination veteran Pharrell Williams, Spike Jonze, Halsey, Letitia Wright and Bobby Cannavale. But the big talking point is the inclusion of a certain Paul David Hewson - known to his mates as U2′s legendary frontman Bono. He makes his feature film debut voicing a character in this one, and knowing what he, The Edge, Adam and Larry are like with the use of the band’s music, it feels like his presence is a contractual obligation to allow the use of Where The Streets Have No Name and I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For in two key sequences. This is a decent family film, but we have seen this plot before- that’s why I feel let down by Sing 2. That and some of the laughable plot points.

THE VERDICT

This film is terrible. Truly terrible. It’s a sequel that quite frankly shouldn’t have been made, and even with the Covid delays, it’s still not enough to win me over. Illumination need to do something BIG to get my trust back later in the year with Minions.

RATING: 2/5