This feels like a step backwards for this franchise. After expanding beyond pop music into all sorts of different genres in Trolls World Tour, going back to just pop music feels like it's making the film's world smaller, which isn't ideal if they're going to even bother making another one to begin with. That they likely did it just so that they could cash in on boy band nostalgia, with star Justin Timberlake’s history with NSYNC being both figuratively and literally invoked in this film, doesn’t help.
But hey, my first interaction with this franchise involved plenty of scepticism, and not only did I like the first film, I liked the second one even more so. Well, while I still had fun with this latest entry, I am definitely starting to wonder if this was all that necessary.
The animation still looks great, sticking to faux-tactile textures and coming out with some pretty creative visual ideas, like an ocean full of water beads, or the residents of Vacay Island all looking like puppets, or even the trippy shift into 2D animation for the Hustle sequences (even if the character doing the hustling, Rhonda the armadillo bus, is kind of gross to look at).
The soundtrack is… alright, I guess. The pop music mashups aren’t nearly as hard-hitting as they used to be, nor are the individual choices for what songs get used, but nothing here is directly unpleasant or anything; just not that memorable. How it factors into the plot, however, is pretty lacklustre, involving JT’s Branch needing to get his old boy band back together so they can sing the Perfect Harmony and free one of their captured bandmates. As an extension of the franchise’s overall theme of accepting people for who they are, not what you want them to be, it doesn’t have the same surprising maturity as World Tour, or even the emotional breadth of the first film.
Instead, it’s mainly just a vehicle for messaging about siblings and families and how things aren’t supposed to be perfect. It would’ve been easier to deal with if it weren’t for how annoying the film gets in trying to be cute about them reusing the ‘you have a secret family member’ trope more than once in the actual story. Well, that and if the villains were in any way interesting or memorable; their bendy straw design is kind of neat, but they represent the vapidity of pop stars in the least engaging way possible. Insert joke about perfect casting for Amy Schumer here.
Honestly, this feels like it would’ve made much more sense if this was the first sequel instead of World Tour, especially since the Burgens actually play a sizeable role in the story here and were largely absent from the other film. While bringing Bridget back was a decent idea (her and Gristle are just couples-life-goals-ing all over the place in every scene they’re in), she serves more as plot convenience than anything else, which is a shame.
Look, again, I had some fun here and there with this, but at this stage, I’ve come to expect better from this franchise. The visual creativity is still there, albeit not quite as plentiful as before, but everything else from the performances to the emotional impact of the story to the soundtrack is a bit of a letdown. I’m sure that its intended audience will be into it, but as someone who was surprised and then continued to be surprised by how much I liked the previous films, this just didn’t hit right.
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