Trolls Band Together Review

Dreamworks is the home of many franchises like Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda. Trolls is another franchise for the studio and the Musical Creatures have a third film with Trolls Band Together.

When Branch (Justin Timberlake) was young he was in a boyband with his brothers, but they broke up when they couldn’t reach the perfect harmony. Twenty years later John Dory (Eric André), Branch’s oldest brother, finds Branch and tells him their other brother, Floyd (Troye Sivan) has been kidnapped. Branch, John Dory, and Poppy (Anna Kendrick) must travel together to get the band back together before Floyd’s talent is sucked out by pop-star siblings Velvet and Veneer (Amy Schumer and Andrew Rannells).

Trolls has been a franchise aimed at younger children. They are bright, colourful, and filled with upbeat pop culture and preppy characters. As the series progressed the films became lighter. The first film was about Trolls avoiding being eaten by the Bergen and there was some dark humour during the musical number “Get Back Up Again.” Whilst the villain in Trolls World Tour wanted to turn everyone into rock music zombies, there was a dark joke about one character going to heaven. The villains were even less threatening since they were fame-craving pop stars. They were sucking out Floyd’s life force but nowhere near as dark as Trolls being eaten because it’s the only way Bergens can feel happiness.

Trolls Band Together used the same playbook as its predecessor, Trolls World Tour. Both were musically themed adventures where the main characters must travel the world to find other musicians. Trolls World Tour looked at themes of prejudice and tolerance, whilst Trolls Band Together was about family. Trolls World Tour and Trolls Band Together also had a subplot involving side characters travelling around on their own adventure.

The main characters in the film were siblings. Branch had four older lost brothers, the villains were siblings and Poppy found out she had a long sister. Branch needed to reconnect with his brothers and the members of Brozone needed to overcome their boyband personas. Branch was annoyed his brothers still saw him as the baby despite their 20-year split and Branch surviving on his own. John Dory had to stop being an overbearing control freak. The other members of Brozone, Spruce (Daveed Diggs) and Clay (Kid Cudi) were no longer the heartthrob or the fun one. As a younger sibling, I can relate to Branch not being taken as seriously.

Veneer lived under the thump of his sister. He was shown to be more sympathise towards Floyd, but was too meek to speak up. He needed to overcome this toxic relationship. This adds to the series trope that the villains were misunderstood, because the Bergens needed to realise happiness was already in them, and Queen Barb really needed a friend.

Poppy longed for a sister and when she meets Viva (Camila Cabello) she discovers they had similar personalities. However, a sibling relationship doesn’t require blood. I did find it amusing that both Kendrick and Cabello have both played Cinderella and Cabello played the older sister even though she’s 12 years younger than Kendrick.

From a writing standpoint Trolls Band Together had a standard story with predictable character arcs. It’s what to expect since it’s aimed at a younger demographic. It’s a case that the journey was more important than the distinction and the film wanted to set out an important message of family reconciliation and understand people around you. It didn’t have the emotional weight of some of Dreamworks’ classics like Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. This was a film that required a lot of retcons to justify its plot.

My immature mind did enjoy the joke where one of the brothers was found by sniffing 20-year-old underpants. There was fun subversion when the origins of Velvet and Veneer were revealed.  Some of the jokes were geared towards the parents in the audience like suggesting what newlyweds get up to and the reunion of a certain ‘90s boyband was meant for the adults. Trolls Band Together did have one of more most hated traits in modern animated films: beeped-out swearing. It was a film that had a U rating, swearing should have been avoided at all costs.

From an animation standpoint, there were some fantastic details. The section at the beach resort was wonderful to view since there were a lot of details where the beach and sea looked like they were made from beads and the residents looked like muppets. The bus the crew travelled in had a stop-motion quality to his movements and there were psychedelic 2D animated sequences when the characters pressed the hustle button. The villains of the peace had a fake, plasticine look to them. It could be argued that this look enhanced the artificiality of their drive to stardom. The siblings were unsettling to look at.

Trolls Band Together was a safe, middle-of-the-road film that doesn’t do anything new, but it plays well with its target audience of children and parents will like the soundtrack.