Movie Review: 'Trolls'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Ah, tie-in merchandise.
Sometimes it just turns up in the wake of a movie that opens to acclaim and quickly becomes popular.
But sometimes the merchandising push is there right from the get-go because the merchandising has become the tail that wags the dogged pursuit of the buck.
Take Trolls.
Please.
Oh, it goes down in the books as an animated comedy.
But it's actually a forced march through the aisles of a toy store.
Sure, there are characters and a plot and a setting and all those other annoying distractions involved with principled moviemaking along the way.
But – and I'm talking to you, parents and grandparents and guardians and chaperones and escorts who accompany your young loved ones to the theater – at no time while you watch Trolls will you not feel that you're being dragged through a big, colorful Movie-Tie-Ins R Us emporium by tykes who are about to throw a tantrum in aisle six if you don't come across with said merchandise.
Are we having fun yet?
The producers of Trolls have taken a page from the folks at Lego by constructing this big-screen project in such a way that it serves to showcase the array of colorful, for-sale troll dolls, with their chubby cheeks and widespread ears and upbeat smiles and Don King hair, who will be resting on store shelves through the holiday season.
The story they're plugged into is an afterthought – not that all that much thought was involved in any part of the process.
The premise? A troll princess and her companion – who happens to be the one unhappy troll among oodles of perpetually happy trolls – attempt to save their village by rescuing their friends from being eaten by their larger nemeses, lumbering ogres called the Bergen, who can only be happy by eating a troll.
When we first arrive, we meet the Bergens as they are about to celebrate what they call the holiday of Trollstice with guess-who on the menu on the one day a year that they are on their way to being happy by consuming a troll.
The script by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, based on a story by Erica Rivinova, wisely keeps things simple so that the narrative can be followed by the young target audience.
But co-directors Mike Mitchell – who has worked in live action (Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Surviving Christmas, Sky High), animation (Shrek Forever After), and the combo platter of both (Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked) – and the debuting Walt Dohrn mostly concentrate on not letting the plot get in the way of the ecstatic troll dolls, who never tire of singing and dancing and hugging.
The cutesiness would not be as annoying – this is, after all, a kidflick – if the characterization were more than superficial or if there were more on the audience's plate than the admittedly sensible theme that happiness ultimately comes from what's inside.
But the troll doll pageant overwhelms everything else on board, and the supreme irony of a movie preaching about happiness coming from what's within while peddling shiny new toys till the cows come home without just sits by the side of the road.
Lending their voices to the procession of trolls are Anna Kendrick as the troll princess and Justin Timberlake as the paranoid troll – each getting to sing as well -- and also in the large, notable voice cast are Zooey Deschanel, Russell Brand, Christine Baranski, Jeffrey Tambor, James Corden, Gwen Stefani, John Cleese, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.
As for those of you of age who know that you'll soon be accompanying a young viewer or two to see Trolls, whether you want to or not, just be forewarned that you're about to see a feature-length commercial.
So let's purchase 2 stars out of 4 for Trolls. Ah, movies based on toys: with apologies to toddlers everywhere, may they stay off the movie screen.