Movie Review

Sing serves up a heap of mindless, soulless entertainment

It has become readily apparent over the years that no other American animated movie studio is willing to challenge Disney when it comes to making films with complex emotions. Notwithstanding the occasional one-off movie, the other studios are content to stay within the fun/adventure mode, rarely approaching anything that resembles anger or sadness.

Many films have succeeded doing just that, but the problem comes when a film focuses purely on surface storytelling, trying to force fun without actually engaging with its characters. That’s the biggest failing of Sing, a movie that’s designed to make you feel good through song, yet can’t do it because it never makes you care about its characters.

Those characters include Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey), a koala who comes up with the idea for a singing competition to save his failing historic theater. Among the ones attracted by the contest are pig Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), mouse Mike (Seth MacFarlane), porcupine Ash (Scarlett Johansson), elephant Meena (Tori Kelly), and gorilla Johnny (Taron Egerton), among others.

And that’s basically all there is to the film. Writer/director Garth Jennings gives some insight into the personal lives of each main character, but he ping-pongs between each of them so much that nothing ever really sticks. It’s a manic kind of storytelling where they seem to be telling you a lot, but you actually learn nothing at all.

The songs are obviously what the movie hinges on, but here too the movie falls down on the job. They're a mishmash of genres and time periods, assigned to characters with little thought as to why they should be singing that particular song. Unlike the recent Trolls, which integrated pop music into to its story to a fantastic degree, Sing throws out songs as throwaway gags, just hoping to get some kind of reaction.

Its use of a variety of animal characters also makes it pale in comparison to another recent animated movie, Zootopia. In that film, each species, despite walking and talking like a human, had distinct animal characteristics that made it more fun and interesting. In Sing, having the characters be animals makes no logical sense in the context of the film. Aside from making them extra cute or scary as the case may be, they rarely act like animals; having them be humans would have worked equally as well.

The voice actors work well for the most part, although, as usual, the use of big-name actors adds little of substance to the film. But having actors who can actually sing or, like Kelly, be an actual singer, at least serves to make their performances enjoyable. If only the rest of the film lived up to those abilities.

It’s obvious that the makers of Sing viewed the film as mindless entertainment for families during the Christmas holidays. Audiences deserve much more than that; don’t waste your time with this forgettable film.

Taron Egerton plays Johnny in Sing.

Taron Egerton in Sing

Photo courtesy of Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures

Taron Egerton plays Johnny in Sing.

Movie Review

Korean film No Other Choice uses dark comedy to tell deeper story

Lee Byung-hun in No Other Choice

Photo courtesy of Neon

Lee Byung-hun in No Other Choice.

When Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020, it signaled a shift in how international feature films were viewed not only by Academy voters, but also American filmgoers, who made it the fifth-highest grossing non-English language film of all time. Extra attention has been paid to other international films in the intervening years, including the new South Korean film, No Other Choice.

Starring Lee Byung-hun of Squid Game fame, the dark comedy chronicles the increasingly desperate actions of Man-su, a middle manager at a paper factory who is laid off due to automation. After months of trying to find a job at another paper company, he finally finds a good prospect only to learn that several other men may be better candidates. Man-su decides that the only solution is to eliminate the competition.

The only problem is Man-su is a bit of a coward; an early plan at standing up to his company in the face of the lay-offs meets an anticlimactic end. His wishy-washy ways seem to permeate his life, from putting off treatment on a painful tooth to not communicating with his more willful wife to actually going through with his vengeful ideas. He bumbles his way through every aspect of his life, virtually daring anyone to call him out on his poor decision-making.

Written and directed by Park Chan-wook, and co-written by Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, and Jahye Lee, the film initially seems to be another approach toward telling the class division story that’s at the center of Parasite and Squid Game. And it is that to a degree, as those in charge of the paper companies and the hiring committees are either indifferent or unsympathetic to the plight of those who have been forced out of work.

But the more we see of Man-su, the more it becomes clear that his is a story all its own, one where a man claims there is “no other choice” when in fact there are plenty of other options. The men in the film in general don’t come across well, with many of them reacting to stress by turning into whiners who believe the world is out to get them. Some situations turn violent as the film goes along, events that most of the time could have been avoided if the people involved actually took the time to think things through.

The film features a somewhat confusing story made even more puzzling if you don’t speak Korean. On first viewing, it’s initially unclear why Man-su is doing what he’s doing, or why he’s going after certain people in particular. The plot becomes more understandable as the film progresses, but Chan-wook includes several side plots that muddle things further even as they broaden certain characters. There are also a couple of visual text jokes that can easily be missed if you don’t know where to look.

Byung-hun is great as a man who can’t seem to get out of his own way. The role is almost in direct contrast to the one he played on Squid Game, making it easy to see how well he can adapt to different stories. Son Ye-jin as Man-su’s wife Miri and Lee Sung-min as Bummo, one of Man-su’s intended victims, are also highly engaging.

Like any film not in English, No Other Choice requires viewers to pay strict attention to the screen to get full enjoyment of the actors and their dialogue. While it doesn’t hit as hard as a comedy because of this factor, it’s still a greatly entertaining film whose underlying message makes it become a little deeper.

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No Other Choice is now playing in theaters.

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