The animated film Sing features more than 65 hit songs from recent years, but there is a message, too. Wang Kaihao reports.

If you take Walt Disney's Zootopia and American musical La La Land and put them together to make a film, it may look like Sing, which hit cinemas on the Chinese mainland on Feb 17.

The animated film, set in a world inhabited by animals, is about a singing competition to save a once-grand theater.

The film was made by Illumination Entertainment, which is owned by Universal Studios. Its production team was also responsible for creating the Minions, the main characters in the Despicable Me franchise.

Chinese pop singer Wu Mochou (third from right) lends her voice as Ash in the animation's Chinese version. Jiang Dong / China Daily

The film, which premiered on Dec 21 in the United States, earned over $500 million there before hitting the Chinese mainland.

It had earned about 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) in the country as of Tuesday.

In the movie, Buster Moon, a koala, is the theater manager, while the singing-competition contestants are Mike, a mouse who croons as smoothly as he cons; Meena, a timid teenage elephant; Rosita, an exhausted housewife taking care of 25 piglets; Johnny, a young gorilla looking to escape from his family; and Ash, a punk-rock porcupine struggling to leave her arrogant boyfriend.

Garth Jennings, a British filmmaker best known for his sci-fi comedy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), wrote the script and directed the film. It's his first feature-length production since 2007.

Chris Meledandri, one of the coproducers, says: "Garth and I share a deep love of music and he is a gifted storyteller.

"We both felt that this concept would provide us with the opportunity to tap into the global appeal of music-based storytelling."

The film, featuring more than 65 hit songs from recent years, including Firework, Call Me Maybe and Shake It Off, also features Meledandri's longtime collaborator, Janet Healy, on the production roster. The duo has jointly produced all of Illumination's films so far.

Meanwhile, the ratings for Sing on Douban.com, China's main website for filmgoers, climbed from 7.9 out of 10 on Feb 17, to 8.3.

A comment by Xu Zheng, a famous Chinese actor and director, on his micro blog account, says: "I have not laughed so loudly in a cinema for a long time.

"The songs gave me goose pimples. I recommend the film and give it 10 stars."

The English voices in the film are done by Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon and Scarlett Johansson, all household names for Chinese filmgoers.

In the Chinese version, the stars who lend their voices to the film are Dong Chengpeng, a popular comedian, and Wu Mochou, a pop-singer known overseas as Momo Wu.

Speaking about his work at a promotional event for the film in Beijing, Dong says: "It made me feel schizophrenic. It took me a long time to recover after returning home.

"It (working on the film) was not as simple as lending your voice. You have to get immersed in the performance. That is why I danced when working."

For the director, it was critical to find performers who could sing as brilliantly as they vocalized their lines.

"Everyone found their own little way of making the character their own," says Jennings.

"In our cast, they are not only present in the voices but also in the animation."

But while singing may not have been a problem for Wu, who did the voice of Ash, the porcupine, the lines did prove a challenge.

Her dubbing work was informed by her experience in the first season of The Voice of China, a Chinese singing reality talent show.

"I was white-knuckled upon entering the studio. I was nervous about playing the animal, and there was more pressure since the original voice was done by Scarlet Johansson. However, because the film was so funny, I overcame my fears."

A bonus is the Chinese version includes a Chinese song Set It All Free sung by Wu.

The film also unwittingly shines a spotlight on Chinese singing reality shows, which have been widely criticized in recent years.

As Zazie, a film commentator with Iris magazine, says: "The film gently raps these talent shows, as they are always about fame and profit."

In the film, the animals finally abandon the talent-show idea and organize a gala on the ruins of the collapsed theater.

"It (the film) goes beyond consumerism and ends in a fiesta to be enjoyed by the whole city," says Zazie.

Last year, Zootopia earned 1.53 billion yuan at the Chinese box office, topping the animated-film charts for movies screened in the country.

So, will Sing be as successful?

Zazie says: "Sing has conventional values ... and it is a delicious chicken soup. But Zootopia had richer cultural connotations and its hidden purpose was to comment on social issues.

So, it is difficult for other films to reach that position."

Contact the writer at wangkaihao@chinadaily.com.cn