Miles of smiles

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/11/2016 (3314 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As online trolls get nastier and nastier, maybe it’s time to revisit the cuter, cheerier kind. You know, those weird little 1960s-era toys with the crazy hair.

Generally, the toy-as-screenplay genre is pretty gruesome, being a crass merchandising ploy with predictably flat characters. (See Barbie, Bratz, Battleship, Transformers.) This Dreamworks outing, from a crew of writers and directors that has worked on Shrek, SpongeBob SquarePants and Kung Fu Panda, is a rather sweet surprise.

A completely bizarre but oddly irresistible animated comedy-adventure, Trolls teeters right on the edge of sappiness before tipping over into something kooky and slightly surreal. While the title is a nod to those multi-coloured dolls, the storyline and art direction recall the days of outright wacky kids’ shows like H.R. Pufnstuf and Lidsville.

The story starts with the Bergens, horrible and horribly unhappy ogres who live in a town that seems to be constructed from stained ‘70s carpet. The perennially wretched Bergens believe the only way they can be happy is to eat trolls, who are small, colourful, huggy, perpetually happy creatures.

This peculiar premise requires the movie to open — rather alarmingly — with the prospect of wholesale troll slaughter.

Fortunately, that threat is averted and things become conventionally kid-friendly once again. The troll king, Peppy (Jeffrey Tambor), and his baby daughter rouse the trolls to escape into the forest.

Twenty years later and the grown-up Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick), the happiest, sunniest and most optimistic troll of all, throws an all-night raver to celebrate two decades of freedom. Thumping electronic dance music and an awesome light show lead a rogue Bergen chef (Christine Baranski) to discover the trolls’ woodland hideaway and pounce.

Now Princess Poppy must launch a rescue mission, with the help of her friend Branch (Justin Timberlake), a dour survivalist and seemingly the only troll who ever gets depressed.

Trolls relies mostly on standard 3D computer animation, but whole dreamy sections are made to look like arts-and-craft projects constructed from felt and popsicle sticks. The musical numbers, in particular, allow the animators to go absolutely nutty, with trippy psychedelia and shiny Day-Glo colours. One troll farts glitter, and I honestly don’t know if that’s sweet or appalling.

The story moves toward a super-happy ending, aided mightily by comic byplay between Poppy and Branch, and by musical numbers, mostly mash-ups of get-up-on-the-dancefloor hits. Justin Timberlake’s mopey Branch vows never to sing, but hey, he’s Justin Timberlake, so you know he’s going to break that promise. Kendrick has proved her musical chops in movies like Pitch Perfect and Into the Woods, and she’s great.

The stretched-out final section proves that even Bergens can be happy, particularly a prince and a scullery maid voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Zooey Deschanel. The film’s approach to emotions is never as nuanced or mature as we saw in Inside Out. Sadness never really gets it due.

But the message, though simplistic, is still worth hearing: you can’t consume happiness; you need to find it within yourself.

(OK, and if that doesn’t work, you might try buying movie-tie-in troll dolls.)

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca