Metacritic reviews

Sing 2 is like having a mainstream radio station on in the background. It’s enjoyable and not in the least bit challenging. And sometimes that’s enough.

With her considerable musical talent, it falls to Ash to convince Calloway to emerge from self-imposed retirement. It’s in these few scenes between Johansson and Bono that writer-director Jennings’ script achieves a new level of emotionally driven storytelling for the franchise.

Kids will have fun, parents probably won’t be bored, but will anyone really care? Sing 2 is a product and, like many products, it exists mostly to distract and make money.

True to their brand, Illumination has engineered another easy-to-swallow confection designed to maximize audience delight, whether on first or fortieth viewing, although this time, there’s almost zero nutritional value.

If any narrative thread holds the movie together, it’s each character dealing with their own version of anxiety, fear and stage fright as performers. While a laudable message for a kids movie, it’s drowned out by the movie’s commercialized blare.

The movie surrounding the tunes isn’t all that, despite Illumination’s dazzling, colorful animation.

In between the many high-gloss production numbers and a couple commendable bits of physical comedy putting the previous installment to shame, there’s a lot of treacle delivered with minimal conviction.

As a movie, this new installment feels closer to a lazily assembled playlist featuring all of the Top 40 songs that hit airwaves in the years since the original was released.

Sing 2 doesn’t offer enough originality to truly make it stand out, though those who got a kick out of the first movie will find plenty to love.

The pacing is so frenetic that audiences will likely never have more than a millisecond to appreciate the textures or the visual spectacle of a shot before it’s already zipped ahead to the next sequence, always another song and dance to see, even if it’s woefully hard to actually enjoy.