CoVideo On Demand: Trolls: World Tour

In this series originally written for The Phoenix News, we review movies that would have been in theatres in summer 2020, but released digitally instead! Today: the movie that almost killed movie theatres, Trolls: World Tour!

Trolls: World Tour is a movie better known for its context than its content. Releasing at the start of the worldwide pandemic, Trolls made headlines as one of the first movies to forego a theatrical release in favour of video-on-demand. When this decision turned out to be highly profitable for Universal, the studio announced plans to release more movies this way.

Trolls imagines a fantasy world with different races of “trolls” – humanoid goblins with tall hair based heavily on the children’s toys of the same name – each affiliated with a different genre of music. Our main characters are Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake), two pop trolls who set out to unite the different nations of trolls before they are conquered by Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom), the ruler of the hard rock trolls.

The world-building in Trolls is one of the film’s highlights. Each troll nation is fully-realized, with its own look, feel, and personality. The country trolls sing sad, yet danceable tunes in a vast desert reminiscent of the American West; the funk trolls live on an enormous UFO filled with futuristic technology that most closely resembles vinyl records and disco swag; though it’s only seen in the intro of the movie, the home of the techno trolls is one huge rave. Each nation also has its own version of the world’s creation myth, in which the first trolls lived in harmony, but split up when their musical tastes could no longer coexist.

The world-building is helped by a great cast of supporting characters. Each character is deeply connected with a musical genre. There’s Chaz, an assassin who brainwashes trolls with the deadly power of smooth jazz; Cooper, a funk troll raised by pop trolls, whose purpose in the story is to communicate the message that different people can coexist; and the K-Pop Gang, which is just a girl group. The number of cameos in Trolls is massive, featuring television personalities like Keenan Thompson, singers Kelly Clarkson and Ozzy Osbourne, and other movie stars in surprisingly small roles, but each character is so lovingly crafted they immediately leave an impression.

In contrast, the main characters feel hollow. Poppy’s personality stops at “bright-eyed protagonist”, while Branch is little more than cautious, grumpy, and in love with Poppy. Barb wants to take over the world because pop/techno/funk/country/classical “isn’t even real music”. The last character with a notable amount of screentime is Biggie, played by James Corden, who exists for the sake of childish visual gags, and then leaves (unfortunately returning near the end).

The plot puts all these archetypes into a world and has them realize that differences are what make us special, and that music is for everyone. It’s underwhelming considering how cool the world is, though a more complicated plot would likely take time away from the movie’s greatest strengths. Considering the success of Trolls, however, perhaps Dreamworks can use a sequel to explore the world through some of the more interesting characters.

7/10