36. Trolls
Trolls is a song by Justin Timberlake… wait, no, I mean Trolls is a film by Dreamworks and it’s pretty good I would say. Honestly, I was expecting something wholly obnoxious and anger inducing but... no.
One thing I do want to stress about this film is that it’s probably better to go into it with the mindset that it’s for little kids. It’s a pure, out and out kids film rather than a family film and that’s fine. They need something that’s not going to directly talk down to them like Dora the Explorer, you know? If you approach it with that mindset you should be fine.
There’s a lot of sappy stuff here that the film is smart enough to already know is a little much. It’s about these happy little, colorful troll creatures that love to sing, dance, and hug. They love hugging so much that they have little flowers on their wrists that glow whenever it’s time to hug. Our main character, Poppy (Anna Kendrick), is a princess who is enamored with this culture to the point where she absolutely let's the logic of the situation get away from her a bit.
Branch, played by your boy Justin, is a gray troll who lost the color in his body from a meme… I mean a tragedy that happened in his life. He doesn’t like to sing because SINGING KILLED HIS GRANDMA, OKAY?!
Well, also, because if they sing too loudly, the Bergens will come and eat them. Yeah, that’s probably more important.
The film actually starts off with a backstory that shocked the hell out of me because it was so conceptually interesting. The bergen are goblin looking creatures that are perpetually unhappy and were told that the only way to be happy was to eat a troll. Their Chef, named Chef (Christine Baranski), is a power-hungry vile woman who is in charge of feeding the people trolls on a holiday they call Trollstus. For some reason it takes place only once a year. I’m not entirely sure why since the Troll tree is at the center of Bergen Town but whatever.
The trolls escape and Chef, for some reason, is blamed for this and banished from the Bergens city. Because of this I couldn’t help but feel a tad sorry for her, especially since 20 years pass and she’s stayed in isolation all that time looking for them.
Luckily, Poppy throws a huge party that night, one that Branch warned her not to throw, and Chef comes and takes away a collection of trolls including one named Creek (Russell Brand), a Zen like troll that ends up playing an important role in the story later. At the moment, he was just Poppy's current crush.
Because Poppy’s brave, thanks to her upbringing, she heads out on her own to save them. Branch later joins her to help because despite being grumpy, he’s not evil. Also, Poppy tossed all the other trolls in his private bunker so that likely helped make the decision easier. He's so me. I tend to not handle crowds well.
The development amongst the troll main characters here is fairly standard. You know that eventually Branch is going to be worn down and turn towards Poppy’s way of thinking once he eventually learns to be happy again. The more interesting thing is what they do with some of the Bergen.
The king of the Bergens' son, King Gristle Jr. (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has never eaten a troll and thus has never been happy. Through shenanigans, the trolls end up helping another maid bergen named Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) disguise herself and get to know King Gristle due to her having a crush on him. The barriers between these two species begin to close from there.
The idea that this can happen now because 20 years have gone by without a troll being eaten does sell the plot to this a little more. Because there are Bergen that just haven’t eaten trolls, being able to view happiness as something that can exist without them is not only plausible but necessary and you see that through the natural developing relationship between Gristle and Bridget. The outlier is Chef, who comes from the old era where eating trolls was commonplace and it’s also tied to her identity. She also wants to kill the current king and take his place so there’s that.
There was a very strong twist that happens in the film that, to be fair, I guessed would happen but only really because I was brainstorming ideas on what the excuse for "that character" still being around could be. The only one that made sense to me sounded the most devious but also a bit too mean for this film… and yet that’s the one they went with. I was so proud of this film for that, you have no idea.
That said, there’s not a whole lot to it outside of what I mentioned, I feel. What’s there is genuinely good, don’t get me wrong, but the rest of the film takes up its time with antics concerning what I just described or singing. Lots and lots of singing… which again is fine. I love musicals. I wish most movies were musicals… but Jukebox musicals tend to be a little hit or miss for me. Mostly miss.
I didn’t mind it here to be fair. If they were just singing songs I already knew and that was the end of it, it'd be a problem but the songs in this film are accompanied by AMAZING visuals. The creativity in the visuals of this film is truly stunning. I very much appreciated that they didn’t just give themselves a cute art-style and call it a day. When you see hair transform into rainbows and spin around a crystal ball to simulate a feeling being expressed as two characters are merely skating, you can’t not admire how much fun the animation team was having.
Still, because it’s a jukebox musical and it’s utilizing songs that already exist and are already popular my enthusiasm to hear them does lower a bit. There are a few original songs in here too, thankfully, but it wasn’t really enough to get me to seek out the soundtrack. Honestly, my favorite song in this film was the part where the Bergens sing Clint Eastwood by the Gorillaz. However, that version of it isn’t even on the Trolls soundtrack so bleh. Whatever, jerks.
Also, another negative point is that the film’s resolution really just boils down to the heroes just throwing a dance party for their adversaries and that’s it. Poppy basically goes “You can be happy” and the rest of the Bergen are like “She’s right! We CAN be happy! DANCE PARTY!” and then they dance and party and kick the villains out and light them on fire (LOL) and the happy ending commences.
It’s a little lame. It’s not as though they didn’t do a good job expressing this truth by utilizing the King and Bridget but I feel like a montage of demonstrations of this happening with the other Bergen might have been a less hooky way to get this across. As is, the movie just kind of ends when it decides it’s time to kick you out of the theater, I guess.
It’s not a bad film, thankfully. I always prefer watching good movies over bad ones so I’m happy to report that Trolls took me by surprise. I could actually see myself seeing it again one day, which shocks me.
This is the last film in middle tier. We're in bottom tier as of tomorrow which will be the films I either did not enjoy or enjoyed ironically.
