Sing

While not especially deep, the combination of a star-studded cast and an equally star-studded music catalogue make for a fun time.

Sing is by no means the first animation to incorporate the talent-show format into its narrative, but it's certainly the most successful.

It helps that unlike the TV talent shows that inspired it, Sing hangs on to the popular, gifted contestants instead of sticking with the hot, marketable ones.

A modest family feature that offers more than empty flash.

It's good fun.

Perfectly likable stuff of the sort that's harder to create than critics realise. But nothing all that memorable.

These numbers don't serve much purpose. Neither does the movie.

The story exists solely to string together a series of song-and-dance performances.

Sing is one of the biggest surprises of 2016, not because it is especially great, but because it is much better than a movie about singing, talking animals ever needs to be.

Sing is a good-natured, well-intentioned bit of jukebox fluff that is at its most frustrating when you can see how it could have possibly gone in a more interesting direction.