Trolls World Tour is entertaining enough, it’s a breezy 90 minutes filled with bright pink colors and random bursts of singing. For children, the film will probably entertain them enough and keep their attention through the short 90-minute runtime. For parents, whilst the plot isn’t innovative, and maybe the characters aren’t super memorable, the songs are at least catchy, and hey, at least they aren’t Minions? 

On a Friday afternoon, I, a childless mid-20s adult, sat in a movie theatre full of young children to see the latest Trolls movie. The latest iteration of the movie franchise basically made to sell Christmas toys to children seemed to entertain the kids in my theatre enough, even if the ones around me did seem very restless. The film is entertaining enough, it’s a breezy 90 minutes filled with bright pink colors and random bursts of singing, a very energetic pink troll named Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and her boyfriend Branch (Justin Timberlake) along with a fractured family dynamic to top it all off. Trolls Band Together is harmless enough, the kids watching it will surely be entertained whilst the parents forced to go along and watch may be mildly disappointed by the reunion of NSYNC, but probably won’t completely hate the film. 

Trolls Band Together weirdly doesn’t acknowledge the events of its second movie, rather the movie first reveals that Branch was in a boyband with his siblings who ended up breaking up and subsequently leaving him. At the wedding of Bridget and Gristle, prominently featured in the first Trolls movie, Branch’s estranged brother John Dory interrupts the wedding to ask Branch to come with him to rescue their brother Floyd, trapped by wannabe pop star siblings named Velvet and Veneer who are sucking the talent out of him for their own use. The majority of the film follows Poppy joining Branch and John Dory in searching for the rest of their siblings to rescue Floyd. Spruce, who changed his name to Bruce, was living on a vacation island, happily married, and running a resort and Clay, who had been hiding out at a miniature golf course with Via and a bunch of other trolls. Via, it later turns out, is Poppy’s long-lost sister, and is reluctant to leave the safety of their golf course. The end of the film is the final confrontation, the trolls trying to make the “Perfect Family Harmony” to break diamond and thus free the brothers and prevent their talent from being sucked out. 

The story is easily the weakest part of the movie. Sure, it’s for children so it’s certainly not going to be a super complicated story with layers upon layers of hidden meaning and social commentary beneath it, but the story presented to the audience is frankly… a little boring. It felt like Poppy took a bit of a back seat, with Branch taking up a lot of the story, the introduction of his brothers and subsequent rescue of them never truly enticed me. With a lot of characters introduced, I never truly cared about the actual story of Branch searching for his brothers, perhaps with the exception of Floyd himself. Perhaps if the brothers had been mentioned in a previous movie (maybe they were, but I honestly don’t remember the previous movies that well), but there just wasn’t a whole lot for me to grasp onto here, the new characters simply aren’t memorable or interesting. How much one cares about the story really depends on how much they’re really invested in Branch searching for siblings they’d never heard of until watching the movie. If you’re not invested in that, then the entire first two-thirds of the movie, dedicated to the set-up and actual locating of said siblings, feels tiresome and cumbersome. 

Poppy herself doesn’t fare much better as a part of her storyline is dedicated to her discovering she has a long-lost sister. And that’s kind of her entire storyline. Poppy unfortunately doesn’t have a lot to do in the third movie despite being prominently featured in the first two movies. She’s more Branch’s girlfriend, with little of her own plot other than the small plot with Via that never really goes anywhere. Even though the “long-lost sibling” plot is interesting, and Via would be a character I’d perhaps be interested in seeing in a future movie, her introduction is brief, and her storyline is never explored enough for her storyline to ever really stick. Via and Poppy’s storyline was deserving of way more screen time than it received, there was definitely way more to dig into there had it received the screen time it deserved. The climax of the movie, if anything, definitely was the part that entertained me the most. It was mostly just fun and was the part of the movie that finally began to actually speed up in terms of story; the first two-thirds kind of dragged and felt a little repetitive.

The music itself is fine, it’s fun and catchy, though the original songs never really stood out to me, but I feel this might have more to do with me not being a big fan of the whole “boyband” sound, than the music itself. Even though I personally prefer the music of the first two movies, the music in this isn’t bad and will definitely appeal to its target audience of children. The heavy promotion of NSYNC for this movie was… weird, not only was it terribly underwhelming (I discovered after the movie that they don’t voice Branch’s brothers, which felt like a missed opportunity), but the reunion itself will completely fly over the heads of its target audience, who surely have no idea who a boy band from the 90s are. The song with NSYNC is catchy, though I personally prefer the version without them, and its usage in the movie is cool, but the overall hype of the NSYNC reunion was overhyped and underwhelming. 

Overall, the film is harmless. Its plot is probably the weakest of the three movies and the pacing of the movie lacks the kind of snippy pacing I felt the first two had, but the film itself is certainly not the worst movie you’ll watch all year. For children, its primary audience, the film will probably entertain them enough, it’s got fun, catchy songs and bright vibrant set pieces that will hopefully keep their attention through the short 90-minute runtime. For parents, whilst the plot isn’t innovative, and maybe the characters aren’t super memorable, the songs are at least catchy, and hey, at least they aren’t Minions? 

Grade: C-

Oscar Prospects:
Likely: Best Original Song (Shortlisted)
Should Be Considered: None

Where to Watch: In Theaters