Directed by: Walt Dohrn, David P. Smith (co-director). Starring: Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Rachel Bloom. Runtime: 1h 30 min. Released: April 10, 2020.
The Trolls are back in a new adventure, as the queen of hard-rock, Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom) aims to unite all the trolls under one music: rock. When Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake), of the Pop trolls, learn of Barb’s plan, they set out to stop her.
First, they learn about the origins of their land and how all trolls had six strings to represent the kinds of music at the present at the beginning of their world. Those are Funk, Country, Techno, Classical, Pop and Rock. These types of music are represented by strings, and that’s Barb’s objective: Go on a world tour from town to town, pillage, and collect these strings and play a righteous tune on her guitar that would unite them all under her vision. The premise literally sounds like she’s Thanos who watched Tenacious D: In the Pick of Destiny too many times.
The story is more interesting than the first film where the trolls learned to be comfortable with your differences and you don’t always have to be happy to be a troll. Here, the same tune is played as they learn (again) that their differences are what makes them united and makes them individuals. Unfortunately for adults in the audience, that message is obvious long before the summarizing message for the kids at the end of the film.
There’s a better secondary message of listening to others and their points of views and opinions. That’s shown through Princess Poppy who always gets an idea in her head, sticks to it, and fails to listen to her friends like Branch. Kendrick and Timberlake are both still solid as the two main characters, but, like the adventure, it feels like they’re going through the motions. The listening aspect is the only character work that feels like there’s effort given to it, as most of the returning characters feel stunted in growth because they learned most of these lessons in the first film.
Rachel Bloom and (spoiler) as Queen Barb and King Thrash in Trolls World Tour (IMDb)
Trolls World Tour is also more obnoxious than I remember the first film being. Much of that comes from Queen Barb. Her music is solid, but as a villain she’s so irritating. Her rock posse roll around in a convoy copy and pasted from that of Mad Max: Fury Road (complete with a drummer instead of flame guitarist). Barb shreds a version of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” specific to the film’s message in this scene, and it’s legitimately fun, but her actual dialogue is cringeworthy. The only tolerable thing about her scenes is the musician voicing King Thrash (I won’t spoil), but it would be nice if he had more to do than just hum “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
The voice talent for the new characters is impressive. The most interesting casting choice is Sam Rockwell as Hickory, a centaur-type troll that Poppy, Branch and Biggie (James Corden) meet in the country town. He helps them escape prison after they show the country citizens pop music through an obnoxious mash-up that would make Kendrick’s character in Pitch Perfect beg them to stop.
The juxtapositions between the music is bizarre, as they enter the town when Queen Delta Dawn (Kelly Clarkson) is singing an original called “Born to Die.” Poppy comments on the melancholy song that feels out-of-place in a colourful film: “They must not know that music is supposed to make you happy, that’s awful.” There is some clever commentary like that here, but it’s few and far between. Clarkson is a solid casting choice, but the fact that she barely has any actual dialogue is strange. She’s just called to sing an original song on the soundtrack basically, and I think that shows the priority here is making a soundtrack that bops, and not an enjoyable film.
My favourite part of this film are bounty hunters that Queen Barb hires to find Poppy, but they are so underutilized. The hunters include a smooth jazz specialist named Chaz (Jamie Dornan), a reggae group called the Reggaeton (led by J Balvin), a K-pop gang and the yodelers. They get some screen time but I was much more interested with them as the villains than Barb, and how they branched off from the main strings of music and made their own tunes.
There’s much more time focused on a mediocre solo journey of self-discovery with Cooper (Ron Funchess). It leads back into the story, and I’m a Funchess fan, but there are no laughs on his quest. In fact: For a well-animated, colourful, free-spirited movie, where cotton candy seems like the main food group, there are more eyerolls than chuckles here. You’ll tap your feet to the music, especially when the film unleashes the “funk,” but the humour leaves a lot to be desired. That’s the major problem with Trolls World Tour, it has bursts of creativity but so much of this just feels like a passionless product.
Score: 40/100
