What am I doing? I voted Trolls: World Tour my fifth least favourite movies of 2020, so why am I returning to this franchise? Take away the sugar-rich colour, the felty animation, and Anna Kendrick with Justin Timberlake repurposing funky pop hits, and this franchise has nothing else I like. Oh, but I’m a completionist, and once I start something I find it hard to stop – just ask my waistline, and my many empty Pringle cans in the recycle ♻ Trolls Band Together could take the Trolls in a completely new direction though, and screenwriter Elizabeth Tippett could’ve watched the previous movie, heard some of the feedback, and concluded the same thing that I did – that a third Trolls movie would need a complete revamp to be worthwhile 🤞
Ahead of a friendly wedding, Branch is reminiscing over his secret past as the youngest member of a gigantic boy band, twenty years ago – Poppy catches wind of this and professes her love for the boy band as well. And, lo and behold, the wedding is later interrupted by one of Branch’s four long lost bandmate brothers, who brings a tale of mischief that sees fellow brother, Floyd, captured by the maniacal wannabes Velvet and Veneer, who are sucking Floyd dry of his talented essence. I know, what must happen next is so obvious it almost goes without saying, but I’ll type it anyway, for the four free brothers must reunite to save Floyd, as only their previously unachievable ‘Perfect Family Harmony’ can bust through his pure diamond prison to rescue him. Road adventure, ahoy! Honestly, this has been a tough paragraph to write, for literally moments after this movie was over, I’d already forgotten what it was about.
Because, yeah, look, I hate this franchise. Ten minutes into this ‘children’s cartoon’, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. I could be watching Napoleon right now instead of writing about this trash 😭 But just like how Trolls: World Tour veered in a completely new direction from Trolls, Trolls Band Together has done a sharp turn back in the original direction, and now the Bergens are back, and namely, King Gristle and Bridget, have a role in this one once again. Bridget might make two or more adult comments more than would be normally cheeky in a kid’s movie, but that’s offset by how immature this movie is everywhere else. Screenwriter Elizabeth Tippett might be a pseudonym for toddlers on a sugar rush; I’m not entirely sure. What’s funny to me is that no matter what personal hurdles Branch overcomes in the previous movies, he’s always a grump again by the time the next movie starts up again – the Shrek franchise did the same thing with Shrek, and whilst I like Shrek, that never worked for me either. Branch’s pink counterpart Poppy only boasts two characteristics in this movie – one is to spew verbal diarrhea, and the most annoying of modern juvenile jargon that should make a ten-year-old cringe, and the other is to long for a sister she doesn’t even have… BUT GUESS WHAT?! Poppy does have a sister! As it turns out, old King Peppy, who once gallantly saved his entire faction of trolls with earnest determination and gusto I might add, has been taking secret-pills again, and setting up his daughter’s leadership to fail, again, by not being completely transparent with her – whoopsie. Odin, from Marvel’s Thor movies is starting to look like a great father by comparison, and that’s saying something 😬 I honestly don’t remember Poppy being so annoying in the previous movies, although I suppose she’s got to be louder and more chaotic here just to be noticed, as this is Branch’s movie after all.
So, what does this movie do well? Are you serious? Well, although the movie never dedicates any focused time to it, I suppose you can sense that somewhere in Trolls Band Together is a message about being respectful and grateful for your siblings, and that’s kind’ve nice. The antagonists are these smooth humanoid creations, and are they based off a vintage toy line as well? I seem to remember some stick dollies with clip-on clothing from my sister’s youth – does that ring a bell? I wouldn’t call the ‘Mount Rageons’ captivating, but they’re unusual to look at, and offset the cutesiness of the Trolls well – and are especially better than the other Dr. Suess-looking creations that one of the former band Trolls has apparently copulated with somehow 🙄 Where this franchise has a litany of pop songs to pick from to fill its movie, there was only one music number, around the middle, that nabbed by attention, and I don’t know how the songs could be poorer – I know ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling’ was a massive feel-good hit to originate from Trolls, but they’ve tried to replicate that success twice now and couldn’t be further off the mark. *NSYNC are back together to perform this movie’s final number, and I liked them so much better when they were meeting Milhouse – werd! The adventure element of Branch’s quest to free his brother is one thing, but the B-plot with King Gristle and Bridget is atrociously predicable – they are not eating anyone, and the sister troll is going to change her ways, to clear up any misunderstanding, duh! There’s also a fake-out death when you know everybody’s going to be fine, and a villainous sidekick that flops over sides to help save the day, just like what happened in the first movie as well – and look at me, back to complaining about Trolls Band Together and its many uninspired elements again 😋
I’ve never known a franchise to interchange and reverse as much as Trolls does. This is not even to mention how the big blue troll, Biggie, was made a big important deal in the last movie, and doesn’t even get a line here. There was also Cooper and Cloud Guy too; wacky characters given heavy investment in the other movies, and apart from a strange cameo on a pizza box for Cloud Guy, you could forget they ever existed. Imagining Toy Story 2 or Toy Story 3 coming out and leaving characters like Slinky or Rex behind is not a world I’d want to live in! But then, at one point, Poppy has the gall to say to her brand new sister, that the Troll’s journey is “complicated” – ‘complicated’!? This franchise has the same consistency as secondhand chewing gum. There’s probably more substance in Blippy. Please don’t make another Trolls movie, or I am going to be forced to instill a greater level of self-control to keep away from this puffy franchise with less nutrition than fairy floss. DreamWorks soared at the beginning of this year with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and has followed it up abysmally with Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, and now Trolls Band Together. Bye-bye, good will – why do they do this?
0.5
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