Trolls Reviews

Does any current studio adhere harder to a predetermined formula more than DreamWorks Animation? From the moment Trolls starts to build its world it’s incredibly obvious how the players will change, where the pieces will move around, and how it’ll wrap up. There’ll be an avalanche of pop culture references hammered in, a veritable example of square peg into a round hole, and a grab-bag of celebrity voice acting. Oh, and don’t forget that we need to send the audience out on a big dance party!

 

You know, for a film that features a naked character covered in glitter (and yes, he frequently farts glitter), Trolls does have a few bright spots. Namely, there’s a pleasing scrapbook and tactile quality to the design of the film. There’s a lot of creatures made up of yarn, buttons, and threads, and moments, far too intermittent, where the film transitions into a scrapbook-like play. It’s these few moments where a better, more adventurous Trolls movie pokes out.

 

It’s quickly subsumed by a soundtrack that’s filled with mashups and kid-friendly covers of pop tunes. Why is DreamWorks so obsessed with repurposing pop songs as anthems? The only time this really works in Trolls is in a quiet, emotional moment when our grumpy character sings to a crestfallen sunny one. That song, “True Colors,” is already an emotionally packed song, and one that is just vague enough to work in a variety of contexts and moods.

 

Notice that I haven’t talked about the script for Trolls yet, and there’s a valid reason for that. It’s the thinnest gruel, a combination of hero’s journey, love story, and musical adventure that’s cliché from the word go. Will the sunny character learn the value of other emotions? You bet. Will the grumpy one regain his vibrancy after exposing his Tragic Backstory™ and joining up with the sunny one? Absolutely. Will the villains house a sympathetic character that helps our heroes and works through her own emotional arch? Yep, got that too.

 

Calling Trolls a cliché feels somehow an insult to clichés. Trolls is straight-up rolled off of the assembly line, and super-engineered to entertain the tots and sell a ton of merchandise. DreamWorks has franchising in mind here, and they’ve barely bothered to conceal that aim. They made a movie with just enough personality to guarantee solid box office returns, a spinoff tv show, and a sequel (or three).

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this flick but since I have seen all the previous productions from DreamWorks Animation, I thought I might as well check it out. First of all, is it me or are the concepts developed by DA becoming only more and more lame? Seriously, to make a movie about these dolls was just a terrible idea and, yet, it was still apparently quite successful at the box-office. Anyway, I still didn't care much for the damned thing. I mean, except for their goofy hair, the characters didn't even really look like the dolls but, at least, I have to admit that the animation was not bad and some of the other characters were actually pretty neat. Another thing that bothered me was that, except for one new hit song from Justin Timberlake, they only recycled some old hits which was rather lazy in my opinion. Finally, the biggest problem with this flick was probably that the story was just so derivative and boring. Anyway, to conclude, you might argue that I was not exactly the target audience for this movie but I would rather watch anything else from Pixar with my kids, even one of their recent sequels, because I'm sure that we would all have a great time.

It has its good moments musical and non musical (the 'schrek girl' lookalike cinderella dreaming with his prince, the quest in the forest) and all the merchandisisn art concept.

Notes:
*I honestly wasn't too impressed with the trailer.
*It just feels like a complete Smurfs copy.
*Not even sure why they decided to make this.
*The main reason I decided to check it out is because my huge crushes Zooey Deschanel and Anna Kendrick are in it.
*It does have an exceptionally awesome cast.
*Mike Mitchell hasn't made a lot of good movies with his best being Sky High which I loved.
*Walt Dohrn also directed a few of the Shrek films which were still good.
*Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger wrote for the Kung Fu Panda trilogy as well as two of the terrible Alvin and the Chipmunks films.
*Erica Rivinoja has yet to fail me with her work on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and Extreme Movie (guilty pleasure).
*Hopefully the music doesn't suck here.

Pros:
*My favorite song is "Hair Up".
*The characters are pretty interesting.
*For me you can't go wrong with Anna Kendrick or Zooey Deschanel.
*It had some pretty amusing ideas.

Cons:
*The story is pretty generic.
*I didn't really like the designs of the creatures.
*I was hoping for more original songs than ones I already know.

Verdict:
It's a decent watch. I was hoping it would be better considering the talent. It's a pretty generic kids movie that does have moments. It just overall should have been more entertaining than it was.