‘Sing 2’ plays it again, and it’s charming this time too
The 2016 animated opus “Sing,” a jukebox musical filled with celebrityvoiced animated animals belting out Top 40 hits, was the type of confection practically engineered in a lab to be a crowd-pleasing, toe-tapping hit. And wouldn’t you know — it worked.
The charming story and characters (and all those songs), plus the infectious “Let’s put on a show!” ethos lifted the film to a worldwide gross that made a sequel all but inevitable for the Illumination production. Thus, when it came time to power up the jukebox again for “Sing 2,” in theaters Wednesday, returning director Garth Jennings knew enough not to mess with the formula.
So here we are five years later, back again with ever-excitable koala impresario Buster Moon (voiced by Matthew McConaughey), still doing his best to entertain the masses. Sure, he saved his theater from foreclosure and forged some meaningful friendships in the process, but that was then. While it’s nice to be playing sold-out shows every day to local audiences, Buster wants bigger and better.
After talent scout dog Suki (East Bay native Chelsea Peretti) attends the show and assures Buster his reimagined production of “Alice in Wonderland” simply doesn’t have what it takes to make it in the big city, the go-getter koala packs his motley menagerie of singing animals — including porcupine Ash (Scarlett Johansson), gorilla Johnny (Taron Egerton) and pig Petunia (Reese Witherspoon) — into a bus and sets out to the Vegas-esque Redshore City to prove the naysayers wrong.
Of course, after arriving there’s still the matter of persuading white wolf hotel maven Jimmy Crystal (Bobby Cannavale) to take a chance on their hastily conceived sci-fi musical idea. But even once they have him on board, Buster has to navigate the issue of Crystal’s spoiled daughter Porsha (pop singer Halsey) deciding she wants the lead. Oh, and there’s also the small matter of persuading reclusive lion rocker Clay Calloway (U2’s Bono) to come out of retirement and perform for their big finale.
Sure, some of the window dressing and plot peculiarities are different this time, but there are no real surprises. Does anyone think they’d enlist Bono if there was any suspense about the finale?
Writer-director Jennings strenuously sticks true to the brand, so we all know how this will end.
The goal here is to have audiences bobbing their heads and humming the tunes (including U2’s brand-new single, “Your Song Changed My Life,” perfectly timed for inclusion here) on their way out of the theater. And so, “Sing 2” marches to the same orders of its animated original for a third-act showpiece composed of oh so many bigthroated covers of oh so many pop standards sung by oh so many CGI animals.