Movie Thoughts: Trolls (2016)

• Released: 4 November 2016
• Directed by: Mike Michtell, Walt Dohrn
• Running time: 1 h 32 min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

Two tiny trolls set out on a journey to rescue their friends from the troll-eating Bergens.

My Thoughts

I’m going to be honest: despite me being the animation movie fan that I am, I really have been missing out on watching Dreamworks movies released in the 2010s. Turbo, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Trolls, Boss Baby, Captain Underpants and Abominable… I all haven’t seen these (yet), with exception of today’s review, Trolls! I put off watching this one for so long because it looked unappealing and childish to me. I know, don’t judge a book by it’s cover, yadda yadda yadda, but I just really didn’t care for seeing this one.

But after seeing multiple people recommend this movie, I decided that maybe there had to be something there. So I got the opportunity to see it and took it. Let’s have a look at Dreamworks’ Trolls.

It’s a basic plot, but it’s got some good elements. For one, I was really surprised to see that not all of the Bergens were portrayed as bad. They just needed someone to show them the way to happiness without having to eat Trolls. Some of the Bergens were even pretty darn likable. The story was executed well, and I was glad to see that Branch wasn’t forced to change his more pessimistic outlook on life, but instead came to be his true happy self again through the journey he made with Poppy. The story isn’t the most original, but I absolutely like what they did with it here.

The characters are okay, too. We have upbeat Poppy who is always ready for a party, and she complements the more morose Branch perfectly. They both help one another in the story, especially at the plot’s lowest point, where it ends up being Branch to show Poppy the way to happiness instead of vice versa. For leads, these two are pretty good. We also have some major side characters, such as Gristle Jr. and Bridget. They both have some depth to them, though not the most, and I was happy to see that these two were our Bergen characters we got that eventually moved to the side of the good guys. Poppy’s friends are… honestly, with a bit too much. There’s a ton of them and I absolutely could not recall their names or personalities, simply because with some many. I think they could’ve cut down the amount of friends she had a bit, so they were more memorable and less like simple cutouts that didn’t really have any defining personalities or moments. There’s other characters, but these were the most major ones. The villain comes in the form of Chef. She made a decent villain to the story. She didn’t have a whole lot to her, but did her job fine.

Now, let’s talk about the visuals. I honestly did not like these too much, which is one of the reasons why I never saw it in theaters. It always looked too flashy and cheerful to me, and the character designs just don’t do it for me. But, after having seen it, is it any better? Eh, depends. I do not like this whole soft and toony style a lot of this movie has to it (even the Bergens look pathetic and roundish more than they look threatening). But, honestly, the rest of the movie is good enough to somewhat make up for the not-so-great character designs, at least in my opinion. I always thought their noses looked kinda weird, for example. There’s also the fact that all Trolls are bipedal, but then there’s suddenly just one of them that’s a quadruped, which is never explained. Ah well. I was actually glad to see some ugly character designs for some of the female characters. Too often shows step away from showing feminine characters as ugly for whatever reason, but they didn’t shy away from it here. Bridget and the Chef do look not-too-pleasing on the eyes. So congrats on that, you actually did something more animated projects should do.

The animation was very good, as is to be expected of Dreamworks. The movements are all good and fluid, and it just looks great, though, again, I’m still not a big fan of the character designs or the color palette.

Speaking of which, what was actually done well was the contrasting color palettes of the Trolls and the Bergens. The former have bright and pastel rainbow colors, whereas the latter has ugly murky greens and grays.

The background set designs looked good, too.

I guess I should also address the musical elephant in the room: yes, this is in fact a jukebox musical, which… honestly doesn’t bother me as much, as long as the songs are used well, which, as far as I know, it was done here (Also, yes, I will eventually get to Strange Magic). I think there’s also some original songs in here, which worked fine? The background soundtrack was also good, though I really didn’t feel anything for the remix theme of “In The Halls of the Mountain King” the Bergens had going on.

Finally, the voice acting was good as well, as was the singing. 

Trolls turned out to be better than I’d expected. While nothing groundbreaking or special, it definitely had some positive elements going on with the animation, main characters, story and soundtrack.

Not something I’ll actively recommend, but if you’ve got some time to kill and want something nice and colorful, it’ll fit the bill. I’m not sure if I’ll be checking out the sequel that’ll be released this year, but the first was at least pretty decent.