Trolls (2016)

 

Genre: Family/ Adventure

Time: 1h  32mins

Director: Mike Mitchell

Quick Summary: After the Bergens invade Troll Village, Poppy, the happiest Troll ever born, and the curmudgeonly Branch set off on a journey to rescue her friends.

Live a little. This is pretty fun.

I went into this expecting I was going to absolutely hate it like the teenage version of me did. I came out pretty pleased. Honestly, this is so enjoyable and not just annoying kids' humour and trashy music. 

Yes, I am aware this is more for kids, but it's silly and the humour doesn't focus on fart jokes or other brain-rot-styled jokes. I can see kids wanting to watch this over and over again, and luckily for adults you probably won't want to scream and cry at the thought of it because even for an adult this is watchable and funny. Something I didn't expect but I found this to be relatable too since all these cute and colourful characters are so full of personalities that are clearly thought about in-depth as well as the things they would be doing, whilst cartoony and over the top, I could see people moving and reacting in the same ways. 

Charming is another way I could describe this as got this childish warmth and bubbly energy to it, and I was sold. I loved how fun this was and I couldn't stop watching it as various silly shenanigans full of glitter and colour. It never takes itself seriously and just has fun with everything. I'm so glad it never tries to be "cool" or branch out to tweens, as I feel like then it would have become cringy and hard to watch. But then again, it felt a little odd watching a group of trolls sing the song that killed another's grandma at the poor guy.

I think mainly this works because many of the characters are wonderfully written and unique (except James Corden. We ignore him). Everyone had their thing but also were able to be a character around that one thing, which A lot of kids' films do fall into the trap of shoving that one thing in every scene to almost scream "HEY LOOK AT THIS THING MY CHARACTER IS BASED ON. SEE? IT'S FUNNY RIGHT?." The main two characters, voiced by Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake I adored. Even though it's a trope that has been shown for years, I ate it right up. Sunshine and grumpy personalities are something you can never go wrong with and they improved on it. They look so adorable in their designs to reflect this and I loved watching the pair interact. 

The story is pretty simple, but it does swerve off into other things like a sudden romance plot which was so cute to witness. It felt a little weird sometimes but it was cute more or less. I'm glad it didn't jam in a lot of things in hopes of keeping younger kid's attention and stuck to being fairly simple, and whilst it felt very quick and rushed along I get this was trying to be an upbeat film. As most kids' films are, this was very obvious with how it wanted to reveal information or when it got to the end you could sniff what was going to happen from a mile away. I don't mind personally as this manages to get away with it because of how much I enjoyed it.

My biggest complaint about this is the music sadly. I despised all the mash-ups; the remixes; the autotuned versions; and the tone changes. They ruined pretty much all the songs they chose and I hated every moment that a song would be playing since it would be an overstimulating blast of neon lights and just pure extra. As for the song picks, I'm not sure if they would have been able to find any more of the most well-known, generic, basic songs. You know those songs that literally everyone knows no matter who you are, even if you don't know the lyrics you know the tune. That's literally every song in this.

Even though the songs wanted to make me bash my head against a wall, I did enjoy this and would happily watch it again. It's cute and funny, what else could you ask for when looking for something to watch. I urge you to give this a chance when you can. 

6/10

"Branch: I don't do high fives.

Cloud Guy: Slap it, boss.

Branch: Nope.

Cloud Guy: A little slappy, make daddy happy?

Branch: That's just weird."

"Branch: [to Poppy] Don't you know anything about sarcasm?

Cooper: I think I had a sarcasm once."

"[after Poppy sings "The Sound Of Silence"]

Branch: May I?

[Poppy gives Branch her ukulele, thinking he'll play it, but he promptly throws it in the campfire and goes to sleep]"

"Branch: What's your plan?

Poppy: I just told you: Rescue everyone and make it home safely.

Branch: Okay- That's not a plan, that's a wish list."