I have never seen Trolls. I don’t have anything negative to say about it, I just never got around to watching it. My kids did, though, and they were really looking forward to World Tour so, naturally, since this thing hit VOD and we all haven’t seen a movie since the before-times that the old ones speak of, we rented it and I went in unprepared. I didn’t know who these characters were, what they were, or anything about them.
Thankfully, that didn’t matter because this isn’t the kind of cinematic tour de force that requires a lot of imersion. It’s all surface level and I mean… so surface that it’s actually floating a little in a cloud of cotton candy fluff and rainbow glitter.
So, the Trolls are these tiny musical forest creatures who are totally not Smurfs. They live and sing and sing and sing and then discover that there are other types of Trolls in the world who sing all different types of music and, when the Rock Trolls decide to steal a bunch of strings from the other Trolls so that Rock will be the only music left, the Pop Trolls go to stop her.
There’s a lot of mythology here to unpack, but it’s basically the Infinity Saga with strings and not stones. The Rock Troll is Thanos. The Pop Troll queen is basically the most annoying hero trying to stop her.
And she is annoying. The Pop Troll Queen who has a name I never bothered to learn is a terrible person: She doesn’t listen to anyone, she’s disgustingly naive and cheerful, and comes off as a fairly awful leader. Yes, I understand that was the point of the movie is that she isn’t a good leader because she never listens to anyone, but it still doesn’t stop her from being annoying and no one seems to realize what a close-minded authoritarian she is because she’s cute or something.
As for the movie, you know… it’s not bad. It’s high energy, colorful, and disgustingly upbeat… I enjoyed the world that the movie is set in with its arts and crafts style where anything and everything looks like its made out of fabric and anything else you can find the aisles of Michaels and even though the idea of cartoon characters singing covers of pop songs is an overused cliche, but I’ll be darned if it’s still not effective even if it is cringy.
I don’t know… this movie had an infectious joy about it that kept me from getting bored. Irritated at times, yes, but never bored. Trolls World Tour definitely had a style and a pace that it was super proud of and I admit that I was laughing at more jokes and gags than I wasn’t laughing at.
As much as I don’t want to admit it, I actually had a good time watching this movie and, even though I haven’t seen the first movie, I admired how this sequel apparently expanded the world and the scale of the first movie which is something that sequels should do.
While it was periodically annoying, the energy is intoxicating much in the way that I can imagine meth or cocaine is… it’s unimaginably horrible for you, but the ride is fun while the high lasts. This is an apt analogy because I’m fairly certain the people behind this movie were on drugs while making it.
Jason Gaston 