Trolls Band Together

It’s not exactly the Eras Tour, knowhatI’msayin’? These neon cupie doll nutsacks keep singin’, tho, cuz that’s why we showed up for Trolls and Trolls World Tour. It certainly wasn’t for the genocide or the governance.

Weren’t we once concerned about the political, nay, existential future of the Troll nation? Maybe. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. I forgot the plots of the first two Trolls movies and had to re-learn them so I’d be up-to-date on my trolling. Yeah, that didn’t matter. Even though Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick -among others- are reprising the characters they voiced in earlier films, their current iterations may as well be completely separate beings for all they resemble the previous versions.

Trolls Band Together is about a rescue. Nothing political, nothing genocidal, just a rescue. I fear going into any history lesson with this group of pastel Smurf-wannabe cowturds for whatever I learn will be irrelevant if not flat-out contradictory by the time Trolls 4 rolls around. However, a brief background is necessary to understand the plot here. Once upon a time, there was a brothers boy band: Brozone. They were deified in the Troll world, but broke up over -let’s just call it- creative differences.

Twenty years later, Floyd Brozone (voice of Troye Sivan) is being held captive by pop-starlet duo Velvet (Amy Schumer) and Veneeer (Andrew Rannells). These green-haired art deco bitches have a way of literally sucking talent out of Trolls and using it to power their pop careers. Does it matter that’s not how any of this works? Not one little bit.

Hence, Floyd’s sibs are collecting themselves to go save Floyd from popstars. The first stop is a Troll wedding where the bride and groom are both badly in need of serious dental work. Are there no orthodontists among the Troll population? And the key here is the brothers have to put their differences behind them and “harmonize” if they want to save Floyd. Why the one brother had to stop the wedding is quite beyond me. Can you imagine how pissed you would be if halfway through your vows on your big day, somebody in the back yelled, “STOP!!! We need that groomsman for a sec” ?

Whatever politics and national identity existed in the first two films is completely ignored in this one; all that matters is the kick-ass soundtrack, because someone will invariably break into song in this film at any time for any reason. The shame of it all is that every song in this film is a medley. And none of the individual medley offerings seems to last for more than 30 seconds. If you actually like any song the Trolls are belting out, you better enjoy it NOW because it will be gone sooner than the Trolls Band Together theater run.

I’m not sure the people who made this film actually saw either of the first two Troll films. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; they weren’t great films. But neither is this one. It’s very possible your Troll-tolerant, music-lovin’ children will enjoy this film … but even then, I’d bet on a Disney musical 10 times out of 10.

“Baby B” liked to sing and dance out loud
Until his sibs were not harmonically endowed
Now security has gone unchecked
So the family must reconnect
It’s Blues Brothers for an ignorant crowd

Rated PG, 91 Minutes
Director: Walt Dohrn, Tim Heitz
Writer: Elizabeth Tippet, Thomas Dam
Genre: So.much.color
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Your musically enabled six-year-old?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Troll sociologists