Flasz On Film

If there ever was a movie I’m the least qualified to opine on, it’s Trolls Band Together. Not that I see myself as any kind of authority on the subject anyway, but in this case, I feel I should just sit it out because I have not seen either of the two preceding entries in the series and, quite frankly, I didn’t care enough to do my homework, such as it was. Therefore, I can only offer a review from the point of view of captive audience, trapped in the dark in the cinema because it just so happens that my daughter demanded we went to see it. 

Apparently, Trolls Band Together picks up almost exactly after the events of Trolls World Tour, which is a film I distinctly remember being on constant rotation in my house for a solid few weeks, but whose plot or characters failed to enter my bloodstream through osmosis simply because I’d be around when my daughter was watching it. However, I decided against bothering my daughter every fifteen seconds with such infuriating questions as “who is this troll?”, or “why are some of those characters super small?” I thought I’d go in completely raw and see how much of a hindrance my ignorance of the Trolls lore would be to my overall enjoyment of the film.  

So, I quickly learned that Poppy (Anna Kendrick) is a queen of some sort and that she’s got the hots for Branch (Justin Timberlake). Also, Branch seems to have been in a boyband with his older brothers when he was little, which is something he’s not particularly proud of. That’s perhaps because BroZone (the boyband in question) fell apart and drove Branch’s family apart. But now, Branch finds out one of his brothers (Troye Sivan) has been kidnapped by a pair of wannabe talentless pop stars Velvet and Veneer (Amy Schumer and Andrew Rannells). So, Poppy and Branch embark on an adventure to get BroZone back together and rescue their brother by finding the perfect harmony, or something.  

You know the drill. It’s a kids’ movie. The plot is irrelevant because nine times out of ten it is going to be an adaptation of the archetypal hero’s journey. It’s almost never about what the movie is about, but rather about how it goes about the what of it all.  

Thus, I should perhaps defer to my personal ten-year-old when it comes to assessing how Trolls Band Together reverberates with its target audience, which I presume are little girls fond of Trolls movies. So, having interviewed her on the way out and having observed her visceral reactions to what was happening on the screen while we were watching the film, I can gladly report that Trolls Band Together is a stunning success in the eyes of a ten-year-old girl. It’s fun, colourful and filled with great musical numbers. That’s all it needs to be. I’ll probably end up picking it up on Blu-Ray and she’ll gladly pound the living bejesus out of it for anywhere between six weeks and six months. The true staying power of Trolls Band Together is yet to be established.  

However, as a captive viewer I have to say that the movie didn’t do much for me and I think it might be of interest to poke and prod around the subject. In contrast to most Disney and Pixar efforts I watched with my daughter, or even this year’s stunning box office success The Super Mario Bros Movie, Trolls Band Together just didn’t have the same universal appeal. Now, this should not be seen as a piece of outright criticism because a good movie for children that disregards the adult in the room is still a good movie for children, but even in the landscape of films that do target younger viewers specifically while completely ignoring captive parents, this one seems a bit bland. I suppose if you have some weird unresolved nostalgia for 90s boybands, there might be something in there you will end up resonating with, but the rest of you will just have to bear with the movie until it reaches its natural conclusion. Thankfully, it’s not that long, either.  

And let the record state that I do not condone phone usage while watching movies with your kids. Keep your stupid phone in your stupid pocket. Look at the screen. Scratch your heads as to who is who, tap your foot to 90s pop and stay bored if you must. Life’s tough, get a helmet.  

In any case, all I will say about Trolls Band Together not necessarily hitting that elusive balance of general accessibility is that it perhaps would help if you watched the preceding chapters first because the movie doesn’t have time to explain anything to you at all. If, like me, you fail to do your homework, you’ll be left all on your own and perhaps this is how the film will leave you considerably alienated. Again, this is not a reflection of the quality of the movie because I don’t think it would be fair to expect Walt Dohrn (who directed it) and Elizabeth Tippet (who wrote the script) to accommodate my lack of fundamental preparedness. It was an experiment, and the conclusion was that you kind of need to know who is who and what happened where and why to get the most out of the experience.  

In conclusion, while Trolls Band Together may not be a four-quadrant blockbuster some other recent animated movies have been, it’s a solid enough effort to justify remortgaging your house in order to take your kids out to see it… that is as long as they have seen the previous two films and they also happened to like them. If any of those two conditions are not met, steer clear because 90s nostalgia alone is not enough to make it worthwhile. I should know because I am the control experiment in this study, as it turns out.