My children were spellbound by this joyful family adventure – and so was I
Trolls World Tour
★★★★★
Dir Walt Dohrn
Starring Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Rachel Bloom, Sam Rockwell, James Corden, Ron Funches, Kelly Clarkson, Jamie Dornan, Kunal Nayyar, Kenan Thompson
In a parallel universe, Trolls World Tour would have been the box-office hit of the 2020 Easter break. Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic in ours, though, Dreamworks Animation’s latest film has become something rather more historically significant: the first major studio production to launch on streaming platforms rather than in cinemas. The business sense of this, both in the long and short-term, remains TBC – as with so much these days, we’re on uncharted ground. But suffice it to say, it’s the most radical development in movie distribution since Jaws in 1975, which took the then-unprecedented step of opening simultaneously on almost 500 screens around the United States, rather than a more gradual stage-managed release.
Will this considerable risk pay off? I’m hopeful it will, if only because this relentlessly tuneful, radioactively cheerful family adventure is exactly the kind of tonic I needed after having been stuck inside for three weeks.
To watch it is to be waterboarded by joy. In terms of visual dazzle and invention and sheer comedic stamina and pep, it surpasses 2016’s original Trolls, which itself set an impressive new standard for films based on novelty keyrings and pencil toppers.
If Trolls was The Smurfs crossed with Pitch Perfect – and it absolutely was – then it’s fair to say Trolls World Tour follows in the footsteps of the a cappella comedy franchise, and takes the competition global. The rainbow-coloured inhabitants of Troll Village, led by Anna Kendrick’s Queen Poppy, discover their love of upbeat pop singalongs isn’t genetic, but just a longstanding preference. For elsewhere in the kingdom are other clans dedicated to rock, funk, country, classical and techno – and the rock sect, led by the painstakingly tousled Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom), are out to pinch the other tribes’ sacred strings, then use them to play a power chord that will drown out all other genres of music for good.
The pop trolls’ quest to stop them soon settles into a standard-issue children’s fable about the beauty of difference: what makes it so much fun are the industrial quantities of wit, exuberance and artistry that have been lavished on every frame of it.
The opening 10 minutes alone – a fuzzy-felt recap, a subaquatic neon rave, then a karaoke medley for the ages – is one of the most purely exhilarating passages of feature animation since Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse. As in Spider-verse, some of the characters have been animated on twos and threes, which means each of their poses holds for two or three of the 24 frames we see per second, rather than one, which is typical of computer graphics. The almost imperceptible drop in fluidity breathes a stop-motion-like soul into the work: thanks to that and a mise en scène that’s 90 per cent glitter, fluff and sequins, it’s one of those rare CG productions you feel you could actually touch.
The idea that entire societies could be built around a particular musical style proves to be a comically fruitful one. For the most part it’s culture-clash gags all the way: there’s an especially amusing rivalry between Sam Rockwell’s guitar-strumming cowboy troll and Jamie Dornan’s soprano-sax-toting smooth jazz fiend.
As for the music, the classical stuff is skimmed over with some haste, but other genres are engaged playfully but thoughtfully. You might expect the funk province to be a flashing dance floor of disco clichés, for example: in fact, it’s a pitch-perfect tribute to the surreal, science-fiction inflected work of Parliament and Funkadelic, and even features the man behind that collective, George Clinton, as Quincy, King of the Funk Trolls.
There are more than enough of these flourishes to make Trolls World Tour a worthwhile experience for adults: for all the Dreamworks gloss, it’s an authentic head trip, and ladles on weirdness with as much enthusiasm as cuteness. As for its core audience of under-10s, all I can say is my two were tickled and spellbound throughout. “Ten out of ten,” declared the five-year-old immediately afterwards. Under the circumstances, I’m inclined to agree.
Trolls World Tour is available to watch on demand now