BEFORE: Ugh, I am not looking forward to this one tonight, but it's an unfortunately necessary evil that gets me to tomorrow's film, and it's part of the collective that gets me closer to "Avengers: Endgame", so I'm just going to hold my nose, get this over with and get on with my countdown. Anna Kendrick carries over from "The Voices"
THE PLOT: 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.
AFTER: Yeah, it's about as bad as I thought it was going to be, about as bad as movies get, even for a movie aimed at kids. I haven't found many films that would warrant a score of a "1", which I think means that I would prefer to stare at a blank screen for 90 minutes instead of that film. So far 11 films have qualified for that "honor", this one's right on the edge of being the 12th.
When I hear "Trolls" I think about the Tolkien kind, the ones that are big, green and nasty and have bad teeth and who tie up and eat nasty Hobbitses, but these are the kind that are tiny, have enormous brightly-colored hair and dance and sing and fart glitter. Geez, go hug a rainbow, you hippies. But they had to have villains in the film, so someone created Bergens, who are big, green and nasty and have bad teeth and who tie up and eat brightly colored Trolls. So everything's way off base and turned around, if you ask me - we should be calling the Bergens trolls and calling the little things fairies or something, but since there are already Troll dolls on the market, it's too late, the damage is done.
There's one Troll who's already convinced that the end is near, the Bergens are sure to attack any day now, and he's already built himself an underground bunker so he can last 10 years after the attack - he's the only Troll prepper, and he turns out to be right. So, was this movie made so that kids can better understand why their parents have a stockpile of canned food and weapons for when the zombies or liberals (or worse, liberal zombies) attack? Great news, the prepper Troll turns out to be right, the Bergens attack and capture nearly all of the Trolls, because eating the Trolls is the only thing that gives the Bergens happiness.
OK, that's it, the Trolls are captured to be eaten, roll credits, movie over, I'm fine with that ending. Only that's not the end, Princess Peppy and prepper Branch have to travel across the wasteland back to Bergentown to influence the election - I mean, free their friends and convince the Bergens that they don't really want to eat Trolls, and that true happiness comes from within, provided you can sing and dance. Let me guess, the Bergens are supposed to live on nuts and berries now, instead of meaty Trolls? Look, nature is things eating other things, the sooner that kids learn to deal with that the better - who wrote this screenplay, PETA? It's high time these Trolls figured out their place in the natural order of things. Can you guess I was rooting for the Bergens here?
I figured out the flaw in the Bergen's logic right away - they say that only eating trolls can make them happy, but early on in the film, right before their holiday of Trollstice (ugh again) some trolls were happy at the mere THOUGHT of getting ready to eat a troll, so there you go. If the church says that in addition to committing a sin (your choice) there are also the additional sins of WANTING to sin and also ENJOYING the sin, then the opposite must also hold true. If something makes me happy, then anticipating that thing can also make me happy, and then thinking about the thing afterwards can also make me happy.
This somehow got nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song, but it also features a fair number of unoriginals ones, too - a random selection of hits from the 80's and 90's that were probably very available, like "Hello" and "True Colors". For the older people, they also managed to ruin "The Sound of Silence", just to reinforce the fact that the ideals of the 1960's are truly gone.
It's probably fine to let your kids watch this, but only if you truly don't like them.
Also starring the voices of Justin Timberlake (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Zooey Deschanel (last seen in "Rock the Kasbah"), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Christine Baranski (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Russell Brand (last heard in "Despicable Me 2"), Gwen Stefani, James Corden (last heard in "Peter Rabbit"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Ron Funches (last heard in "Get Hard"), John Cleese (last seen in "The Pink Panther 2"), Aino Jawo, Caroline Hjelt, Kunal Nayyar (last heard in "Ice Age: Continental Drift"), Walt Dohrn, GloZell Green, Kandee Johnson, Meg DeAngelis, Ricky Dillon, Quvenzhane Wallis (last heard in "The Prophet"), Mike Mitchell, Grace Helbig, Curtis Stone, Rhys Darby (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle").
RATING: 2 out of 10 fanny packs
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