★★★
Trolls World Tour is a hip-hop happy and mish-mash blend of six genres of music with two simultaneous messages: that we are all one united party of people, and that it’s also okay to celebrate our differences and not just be one type. The hits continue in this song-filled sequel filled with celebrity cameos and heart.
When Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) hears that there are actually six troll kingdoms, she realizes that there’s more to the troll world than just their brand of happy pop music. She gets an invite from Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom) to join the Rock World Tour and in so doing, sees an opportunity to unite the trolls.
Branch (Justin Timberlake) is torn between trying to support Poppy, to whom he can’t bring himself to profess his love, and reverting to his usual order of dealing with any conflict, which is running and hiding. He’s pushed into joining Poppy’s quest when she decides to literally up and leave in a hot air balloon.
As they discover other kingdoms, they find out that the Barb’s plan is not to play her music for all the trolls, but to steal all the music from those genres so she can take each of the six magical music strings and combine them into an electric guitar that will turn every troll into a Rock zombie. A deeper revelation hints that this event has already happened, and it was pop that stole music from all the other genres.
Faced with bearing witness to the end of diverse music, Poppy and Branch need to figure out how to team up once again, despite their differences and inability to overcome a poor connection. The ultimate resolution may not be to defeat Queen Barb, but possibly show her an alternative way to be.
Trolls World Tour is filled with celebrity musician cameos from Ozzy Osbourne, Kelly Clarkson, George Clinton, Mary J. Blige, Anderson .Paak as well as Sam Rockwell as an unnecessary but helpful country centaur with a big secret. The movie is as sprawling as it sounds, though despite disparate sections, it all comes together in the end. It just takes a little extra work to watch closely and not miss a beat.
Sequels tend to either rehash the original, or in this case expand the world. Making the troll universe into different genres of music with their own unique trolls was a strong choice, as it has set up the Trolls franchise for plenty of possible sequels as necessary as the original. This is especially so as one of the points of the film is that there are more than just those genres, delving into blended styles like K-Pop, Smooth jazz, Hip-hop and more.
Trolls' greatest strengths are also the greatest weaknesses. Teaching cultural appropriation is important although showing little kids how pop songs have roots and riffs heavily borrowed from their musical ancestors is a little heavy for this age group. Having Rock troll Barb wanting to take over the toll kingdom to make them all homogenous Rock zombies sounds like a good setup for a villain in theory, but when she plays great music and is one of the more likable characters in the film, it almost paints this picture as a good idea.
Co-directed by Walt Dohrn (Trolls, SpongeBob Squarepants) and David P. Smith (The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show) Trolls World Tour is as streamlined as it can be. The musical actors hold their own as much as one can with very little character development, and the whole show is as believable as it can be for a movie about silly, big-haired trolls coming to CGI life. There are no glaring errors, nor any intended moments of human revelation that any of the crew could work with anyways.
Ultimately, the songs are as catchy as ever, the colors so vibrant and intense with which real life cannot compare, and the voice acting so spot on that Trolls World Tour will work its ways into both the ears and hearts of audiences. This is a fun way to expose kids to music of several genres, with an emphasis on pop, and it’s a nice hour and a half break from reality.
