McConaugheMay Day 30: Sing: Thriller

Marginal side-content for a franchise that doesn't really seem like it would need a 10-minute long Thriller parody played entirely straight. This isn’t really a film and, were it not for its presence on Letterboxd in the actor’s filmography, I’m not sure that I ever would have watched it, and I certainly wouldn’t be writing about it. I waited to watch this until the end of the month partly because I am visiting family in Santa Cruz to end out this month (which would make it hard to watch a full movie) and partly because I felt that the last few days before the conclusion would feature films about which I would have very little to say. In this case, sadly, I was right. The characters from the Sing films appear, but they might as well be extras as the focus is on, as mentioned, just doing a Thriller video. I would say that it’s a parody, but there are no jokes and nothing to really distinguish itself as anything other than “The characters from Sing reenact the music video Thriller.”

When the work itself offers little to consider, the mind drifts toward other thoughts. How would Michael Jackson have felt about this? He didn’t seem to mind Weird Al Yankovich parodies of his work, but he famously had to disavow the supernatural elements of Thriller due to his upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness. In this short, the “zombies” are caused by a chemical spill, which would make it somewhat less supernatural. Would he have preferred that? Does it matter?

I remain confused why this is the only film project of Matthew McConaughey's in which he keeps a tight cap on his strong Texan-meets-surfer, dude drawl. In Greenlights, he says that he took these movies and Kubo and the Two Strings "for his kids," but doesn't elaborate beyond that. Did the director ask him to reduce his McConaughey-ness? If so, why would they cast him in the first place? Is there some ineffable quality that the actor brings to a project even when he doesn't sound like himself, doesn't act like himself, doesn't even play a character that shows his face on screen? If such a quality existed, could it be captured? Replicated? Stolen? Would that be considered the soul or something completely apart?