Trolls World Tour

As we mourn for all the cin­e­mat­ic offer­ings that have been cut short, delayed or can­celled in the wake of coro­n­avirus, I find myself mourn­ing the fact that I won’t be able to see Trolls World Tour as big and as loud as intend­ed. For me, watch­ing the first Trolls film remains one of the strangest cin­e­ma trips of recent years.

It was a Sat­ur­day morn­ing, and the dark lights and strong cof­fee at my local cin­e­ma were a balm for sore heads from the night before. Upon arrival, I imme­di­ate­ly regret­ted my deci­sion not to check the list­ings in advance; the only thing on was a ​‘kids club’ screen­ing of Trolls. Luck­i­ly, no one had actu­al­ly booked a tick­et, so the screen­ing was all mine. Nine­ty-three min­utes lat­er, the world was a very dif­fer­ent place.

Trolls has a strange grasp on me now, the more I try to explain it, the more it eludes me. My friends must be on the brink of writ­ing me let­ters, deliv­ered by hand for me to read aloud whilst they stand in a cir­cle, and I shed tears learn­ing of the pain I’ve caused in my pur­suits to under­stand it. Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn’s 2016 film is a kids ani­mat­ed musi­cal about how human-like vil­lains love to eat small, colour­ful, hairy trolls that pro­vide an extreme psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ence when consumed.

Anna Kendrick’s pink-haired Princess Pop­py and Justin Timberlake’s wood­en out­sider Branch have to team up with Trolls of all shapes and sizes to save the day, with the help of lots of singing, danc­ing, rain­bows and a naked, auto-tuned troll that farts glit­ter. This is all estab­lished fair­ly ear­ly on in the film, and watch­ing it then, I won­dered whether it was in fact still the mid­dle of a big Fri­day night. But it wasn’t. It was much bet­ter than that. It was Trolls.

Trolls World Tour expands the Trolls uni­verse with more empha­sis on music, begin­ning with a cov­er of Daft Punk’s ​‘One More Time’ (a music cue dad-joke if ever there was one) that reveals the Tech­no Trolls and their Day-Glo king­dom, which is under attack from the Rock Trolls and their black and red Fury Road inspired con­voy. These mohi­can-haired tyrants are on a mis­sion to bend all of the musi­cal lands – that’s Tech­no, Coun­try, Funk, Clas­si­cal and Pop­py and Branch’s Pop King­dom – to their will, one pow­er chord at a time.

What fol­lows is a lot of what made the first Trolls film so much fun. Name­ly, its end­less­ly sur­pris­ing mechan­ics: las­sos made of mous­tach­es, a speed­boat motor made of a sen­tient fluffy mag­got, a rec­tal­ly excret­ed birth­day cake com­plete with flam­ing can­dles. And, of course, a Ken­ny G‑inspired smooth jazz assas­sin, capa­ble of induc­ing hyp­not­ic Python-esque col­lag­ic visions (it’s Trolls, psy­chotrop­ics have to appear in some way).

Pop­py aims to joy­ful­ly unite the tribes togeth­er with pop music, while Queen Barb of the Rock Trolls wants to bring them all under her rule, and it’s only when they come togeth­er that their musi­cal dic­ta­tor­ships become vis­i­ble to one anoth­er. What if rather than bring­ing music togeth­er under pop, it actu­al­ly stole from the oth­er musi­cal cul­tures, tak­ing their wares, bend­ing them to pop’s will and claim­ing unity?

In its own over­flow­ing pick-n-mix bag way, Trolls World Tour reminds us that his­to­ry is writ­ten by the vic­tors, and in doing so inter­ro­gates the first film’s own brand of fluffy inclu­sion. The cheery tale pre­sent­ed here is one of colo­nial­ism and appro­pri­a­tion; one that asks us to let peo­ple express them­selves ful­ly, not just sam­ple them.

Although World Tour hits some of the right notes, the famil­iar abstract quirk­i­ness occa­sion­al­ly makes it feel like a cov­er ver­sion of the first film. And, cru­cial­ly, there’s no song even remote­ly close to Timberlake’s sound­track hit ​‘Can’t Stop the Feel­ing’. For a film whose plot hinges on great music, it’s a shame to see it fall flat there.