70% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: It's alright;
Low-energy entertainment
Watch it if you: Are keen for some celebrities singing songs you already know;
Have nothing to do since Moana was booked out
(obviously that last one no longer applies; this review was sitting in my drafts unpublished)
Buster Moon is a naive-yet-optimistic koala who owns a struggling theatre on the verge of repossession. In a last-ditch attempt to keep his bank, Buster hosts a city-wide talent show.
When I saw the trailers for this, I thought it looked like trash but I still sort of wanted to see it because of the cast and the fact that I love musicals.
And it was actually pretty enjoyable! Nothing amazing, but I had low expectations and actually found it to be enjoyable.
The plot is pretty predictable, with I guess maybe like one thing that is unexpected. Some of the pacing feels a little off, but I do like how they sometimes get our hopes up and show montages of everyone heading in the right direction, only to have the next scene completely ruin everything and make the situation seem more dire than it was before.
One thing, though... I didn't really expect the plot to be an actual plot. I went in assuming that most of it would just be like the audition process of American Idol, except with animals (so... Animal Idol?), but the audition part and therefore the singing part zooms by.
I'm not even kidding when I say that the majority of songs you see in the film only have small one-line snippets shown. I was quite surprised by this because I kept getting really into the songs in the first line (mainly because it made me suddenly remember that song existed in the first place), only for it to cut to another snippet of another song.
Instead, I wanted the entire film to be more focused on songs, but there's quite a lull in the middle where there's not much music happening.
Nonetheless, it was still decent, and when there was music and singing, it was pretty solid.
The actors were great at singing, but I was especially surprised at Taron Egerton (the protagonist from Kingsman). This guy can sing! A few times I actually thought it might be Sam Smith singing, he is actually really good! Just another reason for me to love him...
As for the rest of the main cast, I knew that Seth MacFarlane and Scarlett Johansson could sing, but they still blew me away. Reese Witherspoon was decent too, but nothing spectacular.
Surprisingly, Tori Kelly, the only actual professional singer in the main cast, was not as impressive. Her actual singing was great, but I wanted her to sing something a bit more memorable at the end, particularly since it was the big finale.
But in the end it's a pretty enjoyable movie. I thought it was going to be trash but I was pleasantly surprised. The music focus isn't the greatest, and I wished they spent more time on songs, and even original songs (there's only one original song), but if you go in knowing this is a kid's movie with a predictable plot, you'd still enjoy it for the music and the humour.
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