It’s time for me to do what all rational adult men do: write detailed, in-depth thoughts about Trolls Band Together, an animated jukebox musical comedy movie made for children. As I type these words, my sanity slips even further. Not only because it’s late at night after a long day of writing but because I now must rack my brain and revisit my thoughts on the third Trolls movie. I watched this movie at 10:30 p.m. at night in 3D because that seemed like a good idea at the time. What was I thinking? I have no clue. This movie was awful.
Children’s movies often get a defense thrown at them, which is that it’s a kids’ movie, and adults aren’t the target demographic, so it doesn’t matter what adult film critics think. Admittedly, Trolls Band Together will entertain many small children who watch it. However, children deserve better entertainment than this. This is a DreamWorks movie here—the same studio that produced The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish in 2022. How did we go from those excellent films to this movie in a year? DreamWorks is more than capable of crafting superb animated movies. How have we devolved into this?
Okay, Trolls Band Together. This movie sees Poppy (Anna Kendrick) discover that her boyfriend Branch (Justin Timberlake) used to be part of a famous boy band named Bro Zone. Years before, Bro Zone split up, with all five brothers making up the band going their separate ways. One day, former member John Dory (Eric André) arrives to bring the band back together to save one of them. Yes, this movie is a literal “get the band back together” story, and no, there are no surprises in this story. This is as predictable and surprise-free as you expect. The story happens, and the trolls sing.
Despite how superficially entertaining children may find this movie, the adults in the theater will not be having fun. Despite writer Elizabeth Tippet’s attempts to spruce everything up with a few adult jokes, just like in the other films, Trolls Band Together is a colorful, endless barrage of pop music and glitter. It’s suffocating because of how this movie seems to rush through everything, throwing giant colors at the screen without slowing down once for actual drama. the stakes don’t feel real because they constantly jump from plot point to plot point, almost as if they were scared to have one slow moment in this entire movie.
Sometimes, it’s good to let drama and fear play out. It’s good to let the audience sit in one sad emotion. This movie just wants to throw fun jokes and excitement at you at every turn, barraging you with pop songs. The musical sequences are not even good this time because they go through 3 or 4 songs a minute. What happened to letting songs have contained moments to arouse the crowd and get people excited? At some point, the music just feels like noise, constantly blaring in the background as you desperately hope for some peace.
But if peace is what you seek, peace you shall not get. The narrative here is a mess. There’s a storyline surrounding Poppy and Branch trying to get the band back together, but there are more antics from the Bergens, voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Zooey Deschanel. Why are they still in a movie where the central plot no longer follows the Bergens? I don’t know, but they needed something to do. They get married in this one and soon find themselves sharing the screen with Poppy’s long-lost twin sister, Viva (Camila Cabello).
When I tell you everything is done wrong surrounding this twin sister, I mean everything. Firstly, it barely plays into the main story; it just feels like since they gave Branch some long-lost brothers, they should give one to Poppy too. This is done with the most obvious foreshadowing at the beginning of the movie. Secondly, they do a twist with Viva and her actions, but the movie doesn’t stay on this long enough for it to have an effect on the story. It just happens and then is forgotten about for half an hour. There’s drama that could be pulled from this moment, but it does not feel genuine. Story beats just happen in this movie without getting you to care about any of them.
Trolls Band Together has the audacity to try to give Viva a character arc. Her arc is unearned. She has strong feelings about something in one scene, and then in the very next scene we see her in, she has a complete change of heart. That’s not a character arc. It is a very sudden shift surrounding a subplot that does not need to be in this movie. There could be so much tearjerking emotion in this storyline because there’s a sad layer to it, but no, this movie needed another pop song musical number.
This movie is a disjointed piece of non-stop stimuli. It’s an attack on the senses where the set pieces blend into each other. It genuinely feels like an acid trip at times. It goes through the motions of telling a story and hitting three-act structure while not getting you invested in any of it. Even the final act, where they’ve been building up to a big moment, feels supremely anticlimactic. It’s not as bad as animated movies like Norm of the North or Foodfight! But that’s not saying much. It’s not completely insufferable, but that’s not saying much, either. It will entertain the kids for an hour and a half, but once again, kids deserve much better entertainment than this.
SCORE: 4/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 4 equates to “Poor.” The negatives outweigh the positive aspects making it a struggle to get through.
