Trolls
/"I don't trust him. Who wears socks with no shoes?"
Filmology Rating: 2.5 out of 4
2016 has offered us some spectacular animated films like Kung Fu Panda 3, Zootopia, and Kubo and the Two Strings, which brought us to worlds that audiences have only dreamt about. However, Trolls, released by Dreamworks Animation, doesn't take us to any new worlds, in fact most of the lands and characters are rather familiar.
Trolls are small creatures who love nothing more than hugging, dancing, and singing. They do those three things all day, nonstop, being completely happy. However, not every creature in the land is happy. The Bergens cannot feel happiness, nor do they know how to dance and they have a horrid singing voice, but they discover that can feel happiness after they eat a Troll. The Trolls, of course, aren’t happy about this plan and come up with a plan to escape. King Peppy, voiced by Jeffrey Tambour, creates an escape tunnel so the Trolls can escape and live great lives without being eaten. The Trolls live twenty years in peace, but when Princess Poppy, voiced by Anna Kendrick, throws the biggest, loudest, and craziest party ever, the safety of the Trolls is thrown into jeopardy as the Bergens discover them.
We all need to be honest with ourselves about some of the other properties that helped inspire this film: Smurfs and The Boxtrolls. Having characters with names like Poppy, Biggie, Guy Diamond, and Harper can’t help you think of characters like Hefty, Brainy, Clumsy, and Smurfette who are characters from the world of Smurfs. Even the attitudes of the characters from the Troll village are incredibly similar to the attitudes of the characters from the Smurf village. If you wanted to get even more into the similarities you could claim that the villains from Trolls, the Bergens, are rather similar to the evil warlock Gargamel from Smurfs. The design of the Bergens is where I find and myself being completely taken out of the film as they look exactly like the boxtrolls from the film with the same name.
Now I don’t want to call the writers of this film, Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, plagiarists but it definitely feels that they were heavily inspired by other properties they haven’t worked on. Aibel and Berger have co-written many films together like Monsters vs Aliens, Kung Fu Panda 3, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. While they have done some great work with the Kung Fu Panda franchise, the rest of their filmography doesn’t offer much brag about. They are even writing Monster Trucks, coming out in 2017, which continues to look like it will provide headaches for parents everywhere.
I can’t say I enjoyed myself while watching because it definitely wanted to shove happiness down my throat and I ended up feeling it by the end. Every bright and warm color you could ever want to see is in this film. This film screams pop and when you get one of the biggest pop icons right now, Justin Timberlake, to be executive producer of the soundtrack, you get poppy gold. I have had the song “Can’t Stop the Feeling” stuck in my head for the past twenty-four hours after seeing this film. The only issue that I have with the song is that it feels that it was only added to this film to make a new hit single and not to advance the plot of the film. Every song, every line of dialogue needs to be in service to the story and with this film it clearly isn’t.
Once again while I was watching the film I was finding myself enjoying the music and being smacked in the face with color, it’s only after while I’m reflecting that I find problems with the concept of this story, and then add the fact that it’s nothing more than a commercial for a new single and toys, I find myself backing off quickly because of how cynical I am.
Trolls is a loud, glitter-filled, colorful adventure that will appeal to children but won’t overly appeal to anyone over the age of twelve.
Rating: Rent It
-Jonny G