Sing 2

The Neon Menagerie

Jukebox musicals usually make me brace for impact. At their worst, they feel like somebody kidnapped a playlist and stapled a screenplay to it on the drive over. But sometimes a movie goes so big, so shiny, so shamelessly maximalist that resistance starts to feel silly. That’s basically my relationship with Garth Jennings’s *Sing 2*. It isn’t trying to rearrange your soul. It just wants to hit you with color, movement, and pop songs until you give in.

And, to be fair, it knows exactly how to do that. The sequel sends Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey, putting that unmistakable hustler drawl into a tiny koala) chasing the big time in Redshore City, which is really just an animated Las Vegas fever dream with extra glitter. The setup barely pretends to make sense. Buster and his patched-together troupe bluff their way into a giant stage production for a terrifying entertainment mogul, Jimmy Crystal, played by Bobby Cannavale like a wolf mob boss who hasn’t slept in days. Their whole pitch hinges on a lie: they claim they can bring the legendary recluse Clay Calloway back out of retirement.



From there, the film mostly runs on velocity. Jennings, who made *Son of Rambow*, knows a flimsy story can survive if the staging has enough spark. Redshore City glows with this slightly overwhelming, casino-floor brightness, and the performance scenes lean into it hard. The concert lighting is done with real punch; you can practically feel the pyrotechnic heat coming off the screen.

There’s also more sadness in here than the candy coating suggests, and most of it comes through the Calloway thread. Bono voices the old lion, and the choice is almost too neat in the best way. Calloway is basically a mirror image of Bono himself: leather jacket, burdened charisma, the weight of a rock legend who has outlived his own momentum. Since his wife died, he’s shut music out completely. The animators even give him a heavy, dragging gait, like memory has literal mass and he’s hauling it around everywhere he goes.



The moment that really lingers comes on Calloway’s porch. Ash, Scarlett Johansson’s punk porcupine, doesn’t lecture him or make some grand speech. She just sits down with an acoustic guitar and starts playing "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of." Johansson sings it without the glossy punch of the other big numbers, and that rawness matters. Calloway hangs in the doorway for a beat, ears twitching, before he finally walks into the light. It’s one of the few scenes in the movie that lowers its voice, and it’s all the better for it.

I’m not convinced the rest of *Sing 2* earns that same feeling. Peter Debruge at *Variety* pretty much nailed it when he called the film "an easy-to-swallow confection designed to maximize audience delight... although this time, there's almost zero nutritional value." A lot of the side plots—the gorilla learning to dance, the elephant battling stage fright—feel like leftovers warmed back up from the first movie. They land where you expect them to land.



Still, knocking *Sing 2* for being predictable feels a little like getting mad at a rollercoaster for sticking to rails. Surprise was never the appeal. The fun is in the rush. By the time the finale explodes into that ridiculous sci-fi stage show with zero-gravity wire work, alien planets, and a U2 medley, you’ve either checked out or happily surrendered. I wound up in the second camp. Sometimes a wall of neon and one really good hook is enough.