Have you seen one of those television shows that shows a parody of a kids show? You know, the parodies that show only happiness, overly bright colors and obnoxious characters? Luckily, you only watch only about ten seconds of that but try imagining watching an hour and half of that. It sounds painful and trust me, it is because that was a description of "Trolls" in a nutshell. This film is overly obnoxious, unimaginative and so annoying that I really considered stopping watching the movie. However, I managed to get through it somehow. It was a very unpleasant watch and I still don't know how I did it, but I succeeded. Do you want to know how bad this film is? Well, I'll tell you.
The story focuses on some creatures known as the trolls who are happy all year long and do nothing but sing, dance, and hug every single day. They hide from very grumpy creatures called the Bergen, who used to eat a troll every single year so they can experience happiness which they never experience. One day though, the former Chef Bergen (Christine Baranski) finds the Trolls and captures most of them so she can bring them to the King of Bergen Town, Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) who has never experience happiness in his life. Shocked by the capture of her friends, the happy-go-lucky princess of the trolls, Poppy (Anna Kendrick) teams up with a stick in the mud troll named Branch (Justin Timberlake) to go rescue her friends. And that's it. You can probably guess the story from there.
The story is one of the major problems with the movie. It's not only predictable but also unoriginal as we have seen the story of a happy-go-lucky character team up with a stick in the mud character many times before in the past, with some movies doing the story much better. The characters are also obnoxious. The two main characters are both heavily unlikable. Poppy is so obnoxiously annoying for being happy-go-lucky throughout the majority of the movie and not really having anything funny to say or do. Branch on the hand is unlikable for being a jerk constantly. He doesn't really have a personality other than being a jerk and the reason for him being this way is so ridiculous that I actually burst out laughing because I thought it was so stupid. That was the only laugh I actually got from the movie, but not for the right reasons. I forgot to mention that the movie was a jukebox musical. It doesn't sound that bad, I mean it does have some pretty good songs like "September" by Earth, Wind, and Fire, but trust me, they're not pleasant to the ears. The songs are glossed with auto-tune which is the very definition of ear poison. Not only is it horrible to listen to, but it also wastes actual singing talents like Anna Kendrick whom we have seen sing rather well in movies like "Pitch Perfect." So, after all, my complaints is there anything good in this movie? Well, I can name a few things. The animation is great. Even though it did become irritating after a while for being too bright and colorful throughout the whole movie with nothing dark in it whatsoever. it looks like actual objects you usually use when you make a scrapbook reminding a lot of those Nintendo yarn games like "Kirby's Epic Yarn". I also did like two of the characters in the movie. I enjoyed the characters of King Gristle and Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) and I also like the romance subplot that they had. Even though it was basically a rehashed version of Cinderella, I thought it was cute.
Other than that, "Trolls" was a pretty painful movie to watch. It was so bright, so annoying and so obnoxious that I'm baffled that DreamWorks thought it was suitable for a wide release. I don't know what else to say about this film, it's just bad. Now I'm going to rest my eyes for now so I'll be able to review my next movie. I'm just happy I didn't bleach them.
