Sing 2

Released in theaters on December 22, 2021

Released on Netflix on June 22, 2022

Runtime: 1 Hour 50 Minutes

Rated PG

The first Sing was a fun movie, not particularly one of my favorites, however my children loved it. It did have some great music and we own the soundtrack. Like with any movie my kids love, I have seen it (and listened to it from the front seat in my car) multiple times. I will admit it I have grown to love it a bit more with multiple views and seeing how much my girls love it.

It didn’t necessarily need a sequel (neither did Frozen, Despicable Me, etc.), but we live in the age of shared movie universes and sequels and prequels so here we are. The premise is simple and straight forward and has lots of fun and new songs. The band of musical animals from the first movie reassemble to put together a Los Vegas style musical for an evil business tycoon. All the main characters from the original come back, minus Mike the mouse from the first one who never shows back up. My girl’s didn’t mind leaving Mike behind, because his character was kind of a jerk in the first movie.

Like the first movie, each character get’s their own side stories throughout the movie. This time around though each story is a bit more relatable dealing with bullies, self-esteem, confidence, overcoming challenges, and honesty.

Themes:

Themes in the movie include musicals, shyness, overcoming obstacles, bullies, rejection, talent, confidence, loss of a loved one (spouse), terminal illness, perseverance, following your dreams, teamwork, trusting one another, reputation, and self-esteem.

Language:

I went in expecting the normal animated movie “bad words” like dumb, weirdo, idiot, stupid, and minor name calling. The name calling is in there, but sadly there were a couple of other things that caught my attention. The word “heck” is used several times, one character even says, “Your stupid sci-fi show can go to heck!” When I heard that it threw me out of the movie for a minute. I was a bit shocked. Yes, I know it is not the same as saying Hell, but that usually isn’t in an animated movie aimed at kids. There was also a background song that plays during a dance training part of the movie in which there is a line that (because of the rhyming) should say the word a - -, but it cuts it out. It was not a song I was familiar with so I don’t know if the song normally says the word or if it always skips over it.

Stuff to be aware of:

There is a scene where a wolf jumps out of bed in the middle of the night and is apparently naked. You see his bare, hairy wolf legs and the others looking at him, make grossed out faces, and a cat yells in a humorous way. This same cat later yells “I love you” at the wolf. To me this seemed to be a meme of crazy fans yelling at famous people that they love them. It could have been a homosexual reference, but it didn’t feel that way to me. Some characters get shocked and knocked out by an electric fence. Miss Crawley gets chased off by a lion riding a motorcycle with a paintball gun. During this scene her glass eye gets replaced by an apple, which is a bit….um….disturbing.

One other thing I will mention is that a few of the characters in the movie are major bullies. The wolf, mentioned earlier, says several times that he is going to throw a character off the roof. At one point he tries to throw him off and eventually does succeed in throwing him from a very high place. No one is hurt though. The wolf also throws temper tantrums and throws things and breaks things. He is seen as the “bad guy” in the film, but to me he was a bit much.

Overall:

In my opinion, the music in this one wasn’t as good. There were several songs I didn’t recognize. The first one had a great soundtrack. The character development in this one feels deeper and more real than the first. I loved the themes of don’t let people’s opinion of you stop you from doing great things and self-confidence. The story of the lion and the loss of his wife is very touching. It was as fun as the original. My wife and girls liked this about the same first. I think I might like the first one a little more, although all the little tap dancing nocturnal big eyed monkey guys (I don’t know what they are called) were cute. Malia (my oldest daughter) pointed out that the characters in this one don’t sing as much as they did in the first.