Since the post-WWII period, pop culture has moved in 20-year waves of decreasing, er, waviness. The 1970s saw nostalgia for the 1950s, which gave us Happy Days, American Graffiti, and Grease. In the 90s, folks were nostalgic for the 70s; hello, That ’70s Show. (Absolutely no one was nostalgic for the Great Depression 1930s in the 1950s, or ever.) But nostalgia seems to be slowing down lately: 1990s nostalgia only hit in the late 2010s, and then only very minimally, like how the sitcom Friends — not a remake but streaming reruns, basically — boomed again when the series landed on Netflix.
These damn Trolls movies are part of the slow 90s nostalgia, I guess. Like a recursive pop-culture Inception: the original troll dolls, those horrid little wastes of carbon-intensive plastic with the shocks of neon hair, were a thing in the 70s and then, as dictated by the aforementioned rules, they reappeared in the 90s. (Does anyone actually feel nostalgic about trolls doll now, or are we being forced into being nostalgic now that toy company Hasbro has shifted into film production?)
Anyway, I was too young for troll dolls in the 1970s and too old for their nostalgic reappearance in the 90s. Which is also why I’m too old to be nostalgic for the primary thing that this third Trolls movie has going for it: nostalgia for 90s boy bands, and in particular for NSYNC, which reunites for a new song here.
Like: I lack the pop-cultural programming to care about this movie, and I am pop-culturally incapable of mustering up any interest in it. There is literally no way in which I am the target audience for this movie. (I attended the “family-fun” press screening pretty much solely because it was something to which I could take my nine-year-old housemate, whom I am always looking to score brownie points with. He loved it.) And yet, I didn’t hate it. I didn’t like it as much as I liked the second Trolls movie, in 2020, but I liked it slightly more than I liked the first one, in 2016.
It might sound like a low bar, but not hating a movie — especially a movie aimed at kids, especially in a movie environment that is programmed to drive consumeristic consumption (there is an entire fucking Trolls movie shop on Amazon, because of course there is) — isn’t the worst, as things go nowadays. Especially when there’s a relevant hashtag that can be monetized.
Does it even matter what is going on in the movie, at this point? Little kiddies will be drawn in by the gentle chaos of its nonstop candy-colored assault, and as that’s deployed here, it’s fine — I cannot object, as I often absolutely do with kids’ movies. It’s all genuinely good-natured, sweet without being sappy, and it’s hard to dislike.
The cruel Bergens, who like to eat trolls but were tamed by the irrepressible cheeriness of troll Poppy (the voice of Anna Kendrick: A Simple Favor, Pitch Perfect 3) in the first movie, are no longer a threat — in fact, a setpiece early in Band Together involves a royal Bergen wedding happily attended by all our new trolls movie friends. So where is the conflict here? It comes in sibling drama, as troll Branch (the voice of Justin Timberlake: Runner Runner, Inside Llewyn Davis) reconnects with his previously unmentioned brothers. They were once — also previously unmentioned — a boy band called BroZone *snort*; they broke up long ago but now they must come together to rescue one their own, Floyd (the voice of Troye Sivan: X-Men Origins: Wolverine). He’s been kidnapped by evil siblings Velvet (the voice of Amy Schumer: Trainwreck, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World) and Veneer (the voice of Andrew Rannells: A Simple Favor, The Intern), a pop-music duo who are stealing his singing mojo to fuel their own success. Velvet and Veneer are not trolls; I dunno what the hell they are, but they look like creepily caricatured homo sapiens, and fair enough: their dark magic is taking place in a nightmarish parody of Las Vegas, all of which I appreciate is redundant.
The road trip that Branch and Poppy, now a couple(!), go on to rescue Floyd is weird and trippy and rather more strange, in a good way, than kids’ movies usually are. There’s a bit where 70s-ish disco music ignites a detour into a trippy psychedelic animation style, distinct from the modern, pleasantly blobby CGI that characterizes most of the movie. (There’s so much music here, mostly of the jukebox-mashup variety, which is kinda nice but also is so all over the place that it feels like an auditory assault.) There’s a stop at an abandoned troll theme park that is visually grim but also forcefully cheery as Poppy rather bizarrely meets a long-lost sibling of her own, Viva (the voice of Camila Cabello: Cinderella); it’s a plot sidetrack feels shoehorned in so that Poppy has something do besides support Branch, and I suppose it’s good that at least the filmmakers recognized that a female character needs to do more than bolster the male protagonist? Maybe the best weird thing is the strange living RV that the gang uses on their journey: it’s like a giant worm (on a troll scale) that looks like a Studio Ghibli escapee, but happy to be in the troll world, I guess?
I admit that I have been defeated by this odd franchise. I appreciate its dedication to nonstop weirdness. I am disappointed that there’s no song anywhere near as good as the incredibly catchy and danceable “Can’t Stop the Feeling” from the first Trolls movie. But I love that it depicts a world in which strange beings of all provenance — trolls, ogreish Bergen, and many others — have learned to live together in harmony while respecting one another’s differences. (The Bergen wedding scene is festooned with rainbow flags. Yup: this movie is Woke. And good on it.) In a world, our world, in which brand names have been yoked to “entertainment” in the dubious cause of increasing corporate profit, these silly Trolls movies have managed to, at the very least, not be actively offputting about it.
see also:
• Trolls movie review: you can’t stop the cute
• Trolls: World Tour movie review: a cinematic Rubicon by dint of pandemic coincidence
more films like this:
• Yellow Submarine [Apple TV]
• Sing [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV US | Apple TV UK | Netflix UK]