Took me a while to come round to watching 'Sing'. It looked very interesting, and animation and musicals are things there is a real personal fondness for. Why did it take so long to watch it? Being behind with my film watching and hearing very divisive opinions on how good it was or not.

Seeing 'Sing' for myself finally with an open mind, from personal opinion it was an enjoyable film with many good elements but has a few things that stop it from being even better. It really does soar fantastically when it does work, which it does a vast majority of the time, but doesn't completely sing with a few things that weren't given quite enough attention. While opinions seem mostly mixed to positive, it is easy to see why people will find fault with it. As far as 2016 animated films go, it's a good one and one of the better ones but there are far superior ones overall.

Let's start with the positives, which are a great many. The animation is wonderful, it's bright, colourful, rich in detail and with slick character designs and some parts in the musical numbers have some imagination. Absolutely loved the soundtrack, which was incredibly varied which was great (from the Beatles and Katy Perry to Puccini and Stevie Wonder, amongst many others) and they are not just great songs on their own but the renditions of them have so much passion and heart (even remarkably fresh takes on songs that are done to death in talent shows).

Most of the writing is good with something for both kids (younger and a little bit older) and adults. Parts are very funny and others very heartfelt. Likewise with the story, simple and standard stuff but it entertains and it moves with very emotional and beautifully written back-stories for particularly Johnny and Meena. The portrayal of talent shows and the backstage drama, while not much new at all, is affectionate and with much heart instead of being cynical or exploitative. Its message is universal and is as easy to relate to as the best of 'Sing's' characters.

Enjoyed most of the characters, Johnny and Meena are instantly easy to relate to and the portrayal of the underdog with a heart of gold will also appeal greatly. The chemistry between them all is great. The voice acting is terrific, especially slick Matthew McConaughey, emotive Taron Egerton (really surprised me he did) and Tori Kelly and sassy Reese Witherspoon. John C Reilly is funny too.

However, as has been acknowledged, 'Sing' is pretty predictable in places and would have benefited from having less characters and richer depth to more of the back-stories, all interesting but some rushed and not explored enough. Some of the characters were too thinly sketched, and some could have been left out entirely (a shame when most were written very well).

For instance, count me in as somebody who found Mike an unpleasant and annoying character that will go over some children's heads and will make adults question about the message the character is meant to give out. Seth MacFarlane overdoes it in the voice acting too and considering the type of film needed to tone things down, this is a family film not the more adult-oriented 'Family Guy'.

On the whole, while not perfect 'Sing' is enjoyable family fun. 7/10 Bethany Cox

It's a world of animals. Koala bear Buster Moon grew up loving musicals. He's a producer but his theater is failing after several bad shows. He decides to throw everything into a prize for a singing competition. His secretary Miss Crawly screws up the flyer changing the reward from $1k to $100k. This attracts many performers from all walks of life. Rosita is a pig overwhelmed by her little piglets as a housewife. Mike is a mouse busker. Ash is a porcupine in the shadow of her boyfriend in their punk duo. Meena is a shy elephant. Johnny is a gorilla from a criminal family. There is also friend sheep Eddie who is the grandson to former singing diva Nana.

This is a rather generic family movie. It takes no risks and there is nothing risky here. It's a safe movie for the family but not much more. There are lots of pop songs but the performances don't usually advance the plot. Not like there's a lot of plot to advance. This is an inoffensive animated movie for kiddies and young families.

"Sing" is a pretty new animated movie from this year that runs for almost 110 minutes and was written and directed by Garth Jennings, a filmmaker who has been prolific in the past, but not really in the animated film genre. Actually he has not made a new movie for almost ten years and before that he mostly worked on music videos. So him being the man in charge of this film we have here is definitely a bit surprising. The cast, however, is not surprising, The voice acting participation by Oscar winners Witherspoon and McConaughey as well as the likes of Johansson and Reilly shows how great and appreciated animated films are these days. Have been for a long time actually. And the reason is that the contents and quality are on a level where you can be almost sure with every animated movie that it is at least a decent watch, sometimes even a pretty good and occasionally even a great one. The animation is always top-notch, just like this one here, and the story is convincing most of the time too.

The title already gives away that music is a core component in this one. And this component is also why I believe that people from all age groups can appreciate it. There are old songs in here for adults, new songs by Perry/Swift for teenagers and basically something for every age. And the very small ones will of course not just appreciate the music, but also all the colorful fun animals that are the humans of this world, just like in "Zootopia". And most of them, except the koala lead character, give music performances at some point. There were kids dancing in my showing in fact, this says it all. It's almost like a music event watching this film. For me personally, the absolute highlight was the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah because it made me think of one of my favorite musicians' recent death. It fit nicely in terms of story too because it was a quite significant scene when we hear it. But it would have been even more perfect if it came from the same character at the very end because it's the same character who also has the film's closing number.

So yeah, in terms of story-telling you should not be too precise about some of the plot developments like the father suddenly loving his son or the way one character defeats her stage fright, but it's all fine. I can accept it for the feel-good moments in there and lets be honest, even if the koala was supposed to be rather smart and headstrong, he is still pretty cute. There were many scenes in this film where I enjoyed the watch a lot. It needs a while to get going in terms of the drama, but when it does, it really owns the screen. The final music number is simply gigantic and at that point I was closer to giving it an 8/10 instead of a 4/10 for sure. But let's not forget the rest of the film. 6/10 seems fairly accurate I guess. Now, a final word on the casting show references. The film eventually takes a turn away from that concept and I believe this is a good thing as this is a subject that is really nothing too glorious and it should not be appreciated in a film like this one here. Luckily, it isn't really. Only to some extent in the first hour I guess. There are references about only one band member being good enough and what the other does. Or about a group (of frogs) splitting up.

On a completely different note, it is funny how the film really tries his best to be kids-friendly. The snail does not get killed, but celebrates at the end with all the other "losers". They are all happy finally. And there are more moments like these. You will know what I mean when you see them. As a whole, I would not call this film a triumph, but it comes pretty close at times, especially at the ending and there are some emotionally great moments in here for sure too. That's why my final verdict is that it is indeed one of the best animated films of the year. It may be a bit of a long shot for it to receive an Academy Award nomination, but I still hope it can. Or at least we can maybe even get a sequel at some point. Until then, see this one. You will most certainly not regret it.