Everyone Gets to Win

My younger daughter wants to see a movie.  She wants to see a move with me, to be specific.  That’s a perfectly reasonable request.  “You’re always working.  Work, work, work.”  Guilty.  Certainly.  OK then.  You pick it.  The flick she has in mind is down at the local mall:  “Sing.”  Sing is an animated picture.  I don’t bother to read the reviews.  I don’t expect much. 

My stepdad had originally suggested he’d join.  But he informs us that he won’t be coming.  My older daughter doesn't like the big dark experience of the multiplex.  We’ll be on our own it seems.  The ticket line is merciful and so is the price, I suppose.  One child and one adult are in for under $20.00.  The food line where my daughter is holding a place for me is long.  A medium popcorn, one small water and one large-ish water is also about twenty dollars.  I inquire and nod, like an idiot as he explains how it all totals up.

We’re a bit late but it doesn’t matter.  We’re just in time for all the previews and advertisements.  And soon, we’re flashing about within a slick animated version of what I surmise to be San Francisco.  In the time it takes to invest small crumbs of affinity, we meet the assortment of animals that all share an as yet unrealized dream, to be recognized as someone who can “sing.”   There’s the shy lady elephant that is from what can only be described as a family of elephants with African American accents.  There is the housewife piggy, that has fifteen little piggy’s and an overworked, under-rested husband who seemed uncomfortably familiar.   There are Gorilla bad guys who somehow hail from Melbourne.  The jaded, never made it, showbiz mouse and, I almost forgot to mention the guitar slinging grunge porcupine stereotype girl.  And at the center of it all is the loveable rascal of a koala, the promoter. 

One wonders who didn’t make the cut?  Was there a cockney crocodile?   Korean meerkats?  Did someone courageously offer that some animal should have almond eyes and an Arabic accent only to be shot down because it was just too risky?  Those who've seen the movie know there are in fact side roles for a troop of Japanese kittens and Russian mobster bears, and well to do African American sheep.  Cops are Rhinos.  But these days they needn’t have Irish accents. 

Well, the anthropomorphized United Nations of aspirants is winnowed down to our American Idol heroes and just when it seems like they’re gonna win, they loose, but then later they all win anyway.  And the bank is the bad guy, which like an insurance company (think Incredibles) or the Spooks, (think Ginormica) is a acceptable concept to revile.  (The only ethnicity that isn’t redeemed is the Russian mobster bears who start bad and end bad.) 

In the end everyone sings and everyone brings down the house.  Everyone’s performance is the best ever.  Everyone gets to win American Idol.  I wondered at all the millions of people, perhaps everyone, certainly me, who’d rather be more of something, less of something, realized in some way that remains illusive, recognized . . . and I felt sad.  My daughter seemed to enjoy herself.  I did my best to say I dug it.  But I didn’t.