Trolls
Directed by: Walt Dohrn & Mike Mitchell
Written by: Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger - Story by Erica Rivinoja
Voices by: Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Zooey Deschanel, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Russell Brand, Christine Baranski, James Corden, Jeffrey Tambor, Kunal Nayyar, Icona Pop, John Cleese, Gwen Stefani, Quvenzhané Wallis, Walt Dohrn
Animation/Adventure/Comedy - 92 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 2 Nov 2016
Written by: Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger - Story by Erica Rivinoja
Voices by: Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Zooey Deschanel, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Russell Brand, Christine Baranski, James Corden, Jeffrey Tambor, Kunal Nayyar, Icona Pop, John Cleese, Gwen Stefani, Quvenzhané Wallis, Walt Dohrn
Animation/Adventure/Comedy - 92 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 2 Nov 2016
Trolls is the cinematic equivalent of sucking on a sour patch kid. These little 1970s throwbacks sing, dance, hug, sing, dance, etc… you get it. Only the kids in the audience will avoid the sugar overdose as the trolls celebrate, celebrate some more, and fall back into perfect harmony with one another. Part musical and part odd couple adventure, Trolls is brought to you by some of the guys involved with the later films in the Shrek franchise, you know, the ones that weren’t that good. The party tunes are not as awful as you imagine and the villains are much more fun to watch than the one-dimensional trolls, so put it all together and your kids will sing the songs for days while you remember Trolls wasn’t the worst animated film of the year.
I am not the biggest fan of when the song also advances the plot. Older films dabbled in this gimmick such as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady as the most famous examples. Our troll narrator, Poppy (Anna Kendrick, The Accountant), tends to sing her own plot line which is surprisingly only one of the few times the music works against the movie. When the characters launch into a cover like Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” or Lionel Richie’s “Hello”, the music catapults the neon, sparkly troll-goblin things onto a higher plane of enjoyment. Your kids will probably think these songs are Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake originals - please correct them.
I am not the biggest fan of when the song also advances the plot. Older films dabbled in this gimmick such as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady as the most famous examples. Our troll narrator, Poppy (Anna Kendrick, The Accountant), tends to sing her own plot line which is surprisingly only one of the few times the music works against the movie. When the characters launch into a cover like Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” or Lionel Richie’s “Hello”, the music catapults the neon, sparkly troll-goblin things onto a higher plane of enjoyment. Your kids will probably think these songs are Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake originals - please correct them.
Another point in the plus column is the aesthetic. Trolls is not 100% computerized and stale. I saw felt, velvet, and macramé mixed into the graphics. Grass really jumps out and candles look great as the fuzz flickers. Yet, when it comes to the characters, I’ll take The Boxtrolls any day over these perpetually happy huggers. The trolls even wear watches which go off on the hour to remind them to hug. It’s all so saccharine there is even one troll who can’t take it, Branch (Timberlake, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping).
Branch remembers the bad years. 20 years ago, the trolls were kept in a tree prison and annually gobbled up by the evil Bergens. The Bergens are ogre-like creatures who believe they can only feel happiness when they eat a troll. This alarmed more than a few young ones in the audience. It also leads to the most overt and eye-rolling theme of the film, the search for happiness and the illuminating idea that happiness may come from inside you.
The evil Bergen Chef (Christine Baranski, Into the Woods) kidnaps all the trolls whose named we conveniently learned, Poppy and Branch must somehow work together to get them back, and at the same time, help a Cinderella-like Bergen scullery maid (Zooey Deschanel) capture the attention of the young Bergen king (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Neighbors). Got all that? There is a make-up scene transforming the maid, Bridget, into the Bergen version of pretty, and a Cyrano de Bergerac date with trolls feeding lines to Bridget.
Trolls’ main plot is so threadbare this fake Bergen date becomes a major thing. It doesn’t even help saved the kidnapped trolls; they believe it’s just a nice thing to do. The only byproduct of all this Bergen romance business is the line, “Hot Lunch!” exclaimed by the Bergen king when he sees Bridget. It had me saying “Hot Lunch” for the rest of the day.
Co-writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, veterans from the Kung Fu Panda franchise, do their best with a minuscule story shoved over to them by director Mike Mitchell and co-director Walt Dohrn. Justin Timberlake took on the music duties and if he is the one who figured out “True Colors” would work in a particular scene and thought out the Lionel Richie section, then hats off to that guy. The song you heard all summer on the radio, “Can’t Stop the Feeling” finally shows up toward the end and we’ve all been saturated so much by that song it’s no longer an original, but as familiar as Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September” that the trolls love to boogie down to. Seriously, I’ll take The Boxtrolls.
Comment Box is loading comments...
