Trolls (2016)

I think it's always important when discussing a movie aimed at children to remind people of how immature and childish I can be. When people tell you to try remembering how it felt like to be a wide-eyed child . . . I'm already there. I'm not going to compare a children's movie to, say, Casablanca (although some are gold-plated classics in a different way from that Bogart vehicle), but I am still going to expect it to do a certain job.

Trolls is an odd film in almost every sense. First of all, it's based on those little troll dolls that I thought had faded out of our shared consciousness back in the 1990s (the last thing I remember about them was a console game on the Sega Mega-CD, I want to say). Second, it's a film that patches together a number of horrible cover versions of songs, almost as if every main scene was initially planned to be the standard finale/credit sequence we've seen in dozens of other big animated releases. Third, the story is a bit wild, being all about a race of creatures that believe eating the trolls is the secret to happiness.

You find that out at the very start of the movie. The Bergens are about to have their annual feast of trolls, served up by the Chef (Christine Baranski), but they find that the trolls have escaped. Some years pass by, trolls live in a new area, they sing and dance (which is what they do), and have hug time every half an hour. Poppy (Anna Kendrick) is a most vocal fan of all of this stuff. Branch (Justin Timberlake) is not. He's too busy worrying about when the Bergen will find them and whisk them all away to be eaten. And so, when a load of the trolls are found by the Bergen and whisked away to be eaten, Poppy and Branch head off to rescue their troll buddies.

It's bright, it's full of excerpts from popular songs (with the main theme being that they're all upbeat singalong favourites, from what I can recall), and it has enough to keep younger viewers entertained. But that doesn't make it actually any good. It makes it passable, average, it's the bare minimum to be expected from a mainstream animated release from a major studio. Director Mike Mitchell has films on his CV that prove he can do much better than this. Co-director Walt Dohrn, on the other hand, will have to work harder on future projects to make me forget his name is attached to this.

Writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger have been involved with some treats (the Kung Fu Panda movies stand out from their filmography). This seems like a thankless task for them. The characters aren't too bad, although often defined by one main trait, but the script is simply required to hop from one peppy song moment to the next.

The voice cast almost make up for the rest of the negatives. Kendrick is always someone I enjoy onscreen, and her personality is perfectly suited to her character here. Timberlake is very good, and Baranski is superb as the mean Chef. Chriostopher Mintz-Plasse is a grumpy young King, Zooey Deschanel is a staff member who is smitten with the King, Russell Brand is a guru type of troll, Kunal Nayyar voices someone very glittery, and there's a turn from James Corden that is small enough to have him be almost tolerable.

Trolls is average, at best. It's easy to see why kids will enjoy it. The tunes, the bright colours, the cute characters. It's also easy to see that it was put together without any of the care or detail that goes into so many other movies looking to capture the attention of the same demographic.

5/10

Here's a shiny set available.
Americans can buy this disc.