Songs Of The Wild

Year: 2016
Director: Christophe Lourdelet & Garth Jennings
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane
Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG

The Illumination Entertainment brand kicked off with Despicable Me and never looked back, to the point that it seemed like the company was incapable of creating a movie (or, at least, a good movie) without the involvement of the Minions, the adorable little yellow buffoons that ignited a pandemic among local retail stores and toy boxes. Sing is probably their heartiest bid at creating a new brand yet, what with its Zootopia-esque world of anthropomorphic animals, and it more or less works.

If you can’t make kids enjoy a movie about cartoon animals, I hear they’re hiring at the 7-Eleven.

In the plot of Sing, which was engineered in a laboratory to appeal to the widest demographic possible, cartoon animals are holding a singing competition, performing covers of pop songs. This is a show put on in the Moon Theatre by its owner, the roguish koala Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) who just wants to keep the crumbling building (and his dream of owning a theatre) afloat. Due to a typographical error promising $1000,000 in prize money that he doesn’t have, animals throng the theater, excited to participate.

The contestants have all joined for their own reasons: Rosita the Pig (Reese Witherspoon) – who is paired with the shamefully amusing German provocateur Gunter (Nick Kroll) – wants to prove to her lazy husband and 25 kids that she’s more than just a frazzled housewife; Mike the Mouse (Seth MacFarlane) just wants to be rich and spend the money on the closest analogue to drugs this kids’ film can afford; Johnny the Gorilla (Taron Egerton) wants a career path away from his father’s gang and to raise his dad’s bail; Ash the Porcupine (Scarlett Johansson) wants to use the money to build a recording studio for her rocker boyfriend Lance (Beck Bennett); and Meena the elephant (Tori Kelly) – who initially joins as a stagehand – wants to overcome her shyness and share her gift with the world.

They all want the money, but they find that the power of music and dance that unites them is the most precious prize of all.

And I’m uncannily reminded of how great La La Land is in comparison.

Ask yourself one question: Would you enjoy a movie where animals sing songs? There, you have your answer about whether or not you should see Sing. Case closed. It doesn’t hide what it is, and it’s a totally fine bit of disposable entertainment. If you’re looking for a story though, good luck. The contestants are engaging enough, but they’re a rough assemblage of tropes that indicate characters rather than committing to fleshing them out. Look, shortcuts are necessary if you want the last half hour to be a full concert and keep the run time at a length reasonable enough that children’s attention spans don’t explode.

At the very least, there were wacky little quirks tucked into the corners here and there, enough to keep my attention occupied during the story bits. I especially love the score that calls back to 70’s heist movies whenever Buster pulls his Music Man huckster act. And the fact that they dug up the Beatles deep cut “Golden Slumbers” is certainly a boon to getting me on their side. Then Sing goes bananas during the close of the second act, unstoppering a sequence that’s part-Titanic, part-Final Destination, all massively inappropriate for young audiences, but so bizarrely out of place that it’s truly captivating.

Yeah, Sing is survivable if you have kids who want to see it. Those musical numbers are pretty fun. But if you want to watch a world of anthropomorphic animals where they feel truly integrated in with humanoid society, just watch Zootopia. And frankly, the jukebox musical conceit worked much better in last month’s Trolls. But Sing is a solid stab at non-Minion entertainment that gives me more hope than their abortive Secret Life of Pets, and that’s good enough.

It could have used more Minions though.

Of course, Sing is also filled with fart humor and other juvenile attempts at comedy that stomp allover Japanese culture and African-American stereotypes, as well as throwing in a coded gay frog for a joke that blatantly misses the obvious punchline, so it’s double irritating. But whatever, man. We takes what we gets with these guys.

The stars are charming, the pacing never flags, and you don’t feel like you’ve wasted your time when the credits roll. Sometimes that’s the best you can hope for, and you don’t need to dread being dragged to this should the opportunity arise over the holidays. You won’t catch me singing Sing’s praises, but I enjoyed myself.

TL;DR: Sing is a mostly enjoyable bit of silly kiddy fluff.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 810

Claw of Desire

Year: 2016

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The Lobster is a preposterously divisive movie. The two movie review blogs I follow religiously gave it a 10/10 and a 0/10 respectively. The patrons at the theater I work at either walk out halfway through or come back for second and third helpings. It’s like – for lack of a better comparison – seafood. Some people despise the taste, but others can’t get enough. So with all this debate raging, of course I had to dive in there for myself and see what all the hubbub was about. 

Did I enjoy The Lobster? No. Do I regret it? Well, mostly.

I’m not allergic to shellfish, but I might be allergic to art films.

In The Lobster, love is mandated by law. Newly single people in The City are sent to The Hotel, where they must find a mate within 45 days or else they are turned into an animal. They also must hunt single refugees known as Loners who live in The Woods. If my disdain for all these oh-so futuristic capital letters isn’t already palpable, let me make it clear that the only thing stopping me from vomiting all over my keyboard right now is the fact that I really don’t feel like cleaning it.

One of these single people is David (Colin Farrell), a schlubby man whose wife has left him. While he struggles to find someone with whom he shares a Defining Characteristic, he ends up desperately pairing with a psychopath (Angeliki Papoulia) before escaping to The Woods and striking up a furtive courtship with Short-Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), igniting the ire of the strictly anti-partnership Loner Leader (Léa Seydoux).

Another thing I absolutely adore is movies that don’t give their characters proper names. More, please!

I see what The Lobster is doing. I really do.  A society that focuses so fundamentally and grotesquely on pair-bonding is shallow and conformist, with no wiggle room to be an individual. In terms of achieving the film’s intended effect of muting all personality from its characters and design, it’s a masterpiece of intention. The ensemble is perfectly cast, especially Colin Farrell, who intimately understands the mechanics of his severely isolated role and knows how best to wring comedy from the character when he can.

The world-building of this incredibly unique setting is likewise terrific, dumping you in with no context and allowing you to uncover the depths of detail as the movie progresses. It’s not quite as rich in history as the production design of a Mad Max: Fury Road, but it gets the job done with ethereal efficiency. And the beginning is an absolute winner, slamming you into the story with a gonzo, out-of-context image that leaves you slavering for more (although, the more you learn about this film’s world, the less sense this scene makes).

So while I see the point of The Lobster and understand the polished mechanics that make it tick, that doesn’t mean I see why anybody would find themselves entertained by this droning didacticism.

Ooh, burn! This Lobster is getting BOILED!

The Lobster is so subdued that it practically fades out of existence. It’s like absurdism on tranquilizers, the monotonous performances and color scheme relentlessly pounding your brain with a sledgehammer of boredom. It’s got the pace of a Kubrick film, the flatly literal dialogue of Invention of Lying, and the music of a murder mystery, the atonal shrieks only highlighting how uninteresting everything you’re watching actually is.

For the entire film, it feels like you’re in a doctor’s waiting room, wondering if they’ve forgotten about you. Then as soon as there’s a knock on the door and you perk up, the film ends. After all, they can’t let us get too excited, or else we’ll start to think this is a fun movie. As much as The Lobster claims to be a black comedy, it does everything in its power to stile any and all joy. The scattered chuckles that escape are almost incidental, owing to the fact that there really is a great concept at the heart of this story. Only one singular moment made me laugh out loud, and I get the sense that the movie actively lamented my enjoyment, because it immediately doubled down on ponderous contemplation and a liberal slathering of slow motion.

Seriously, entire scenes of The Lobster are slomo. Not just key action moments (ha! Like it has any), but full minutes. Minutes upon minutes of pretentious napalm, obliterating the pacing and tearing the storyline to shreds. Watching The Lobster is like being trapped in a nightmare. Your feet move like molasses as you run toward an exit that glides further and further away. And anytime something even microscopically interesting happens, it’s immediately chucked from the film like so much dead weight. The biggest conflict in the movie (between the Loners and The Hotel) is never resolved. Even though we see the two sides briefly clash, these scenes are immediately forgotten and never followed up on.

It’s like listening to your grandfather tell a story.

The most extravagantly frustrating thing about The Lobster is that every now and then it shows flashes of asthmatic brilliance. It never exerts itself too much, but the occasional brutality nestled in this world of soft apathy is jarring and gut-wrenching in a magnificent way. One scene depicting the crowd’s blasé reaction to a particularly maudlin act of self-harm is coldly stunning, like an ice-chilled scalpel slicing down your spine. And then of course the film returns to flatly droning about how to properly launder a stain or the comparative weight of different sports equipment.

I GET IT. I do. But The Lobster really needs to take a chill pill. It’s so far up its own ass that it can see daylight. Everything good about the film (and there really is a lot of potential here) is quietly smothered with a scratchy, off-white pillow. I can see why this movie appeals to the Lonely Heart cinephiles of the world, but care as little about The Lobster as it does about me, or any of humanity for that matter.

TL;DR: The Lobster is a monotonous ordeal that stifles a pretty excellent absurdist premise.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1055