“Trolls” is directed by Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn, and written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger. Story by Erica Rivinoja. It stars Anna Kendrick, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Timberlake, Christine Baranski, Jeffrey Tambor, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, James Corden, Kunal Nuyyar, Gwen Stefani, Russell Brand, John Cleese, and Quvenzhané Wallis.
Trolls is the latest film from DreamWorks Animation, one of the most prominent animation studios currently in the business. Their defining film, to this day, is the original Shrek, which set the template for not only future DreamWorks projects, but many of the big-budget CG films of the ensuing decade. This style is characterized by irreverence, zaniness, and some, ahem, subtle jokes for the ‘nups.
It’s been a good fifteen years since Shrek came out. Animation has come a long way since then (while impressive at the time, the original Shrek is pretty dated-looking these days). Numerous trends in family entertainment have come and gone as well. And now, in 2016, we have Trolls, a movie based on Thomas Dam’s Troll dolls. Why is there a troll doll movie? How many consumers are excited about this IP? Have we not yet reached the bottom of the barrel? Angry Birds is at least a recent property, one that children might conceivably have some connection to.
Nevertheless here we are. The movie itself is…fine? It’s certainly watchable. The visuals are colorful and appealing. It’s well paced. While I can’t quite say it made me laugh, I never, save one or two moments, groaned either. It’s perfectly serviceable and will do its job of keeping children occupied for 90 minutes. The screenplay is basically by-the-numbers but has a few interesting wrinkles.
The plot concerns the titular trolls, who love life, spending their days singing and dancing. Their predators are the gloomy bergens, who, it is established early on, can only attain happiness from eating a troll. When the bergen chef (Baranski) discovers the trolls’ village, she makes off with several of them, and it’s up to Princess Poppy (Kendrick) and the unusually grumpy Branch (Timberlake) to rescue them.
One interesting thing about the film is its choice to open on the bergens. This feels extremely unusual for a kids movie, to open with the villains before our protagonists are introduced. The plight of the bergens is also pretty tragically compelling. The trolls are our heroes, and obviously we don’t want to see them get eaten. Trolls actually flirts with some moral ambiguity here, and I was pretty intrigued by this early on. Of course, this is walked back in the third act in favor of a “happiness is inside us all” message which is totally worthy and valid and probably much more appropriate for a kids’ movie. Just know that my ideal version of Trolls goes much darker.
And while the prevailing tone of Trolls is earnest positivity, there is an undeniable cynicism to the whole enterprise. The script feels written by committee. There are just enough jokes for the kids, and just enough for adults. The sad bits come exactly when you’re expecting them, and last for just as long as they’re supposed to. The film feels a need to announce itself as contemporary and “with it.” Characters will occasionally drop into immediately dated slang (“YOLO!”). One troll has an “auto-tune” voice. Etc. These elements feel very self-conscious and are at times cringe-worthy. There is a lot of singing in Trolls, which is nice in that it sets it apart from a lot of other contemporary animated films. The soundtrack itself though, isn’t great. It’s not that the songs are bad per se, just that together they feel like a random assemblage of pop tracks designed to appeal to as many demographics as possible (also, why is “The Sound of Silence” in this movie? Why?).
There’s also something vaguely depressing about the sheer waste of the celebrity voice cast. There are a ton of big names here, many of whom have very small roles. Why not give the work to professional voice actors? To be fair, this criticism would apply to most films in this category, but its particularly galling here.
I can’t say I especially liked Trolls. It’s not bad, just nothing special. Kids will probably like it though.
-Anthony Calamunci