Music snobbery is making a comeback.
On the heels of the excellent serial remake of "High Fidelity," about a tasteful Brooklyn
record store owner, comes "Trolls World Tour," in which different pixie clans each
representing a music genre vie for sonic domination. Both are quaint in their own way, pretending that
our musical borders didn’t years ago disintegrate into a digital soup.
"Trolls World Tour," a sequel to the 2016 DreamWorks original, had been planned for theatrical
release before the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday, Universal Pictures instead released it straight into
the home, as a $19.99 digital rental — a rare breaking of the theatrical release window by a major
studio.
That makes "Trolls World Tour" a kind of trial balloon, albeit a very glittery one. Is it worth
it? That may depend on just how bored your housebound kids are. It is, at least, a shiny new object when
there are few about.
Directed by Walt Dohrn, with co-director David P. Smith, "Trolls World Tour" is a sped up
version of the jukebox musical. It runs through so many songs that it might be better called a Spotify
musical, with infinite skips.
Both "Trolls" movies can be hard to look at. They’re so garishly colored that I’d recommend
dimming your TV set. But when they’re not too loud and you’ve sufficiently shielded your eyes, their
sugary highs are pleasant enough and occasionally tuneful. An animated movie can do worse than
indoctrinate another generation to the joys of Earth, Wind and Fire’s "September."
In "World Tour," our original clan, including Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin
Timberlake), discover a wider world of trolls. The trolls we know believe in the power of pop, but it
turns out there are others out there devoted to techno, classical, country, funk and rock. There are
even other pockets they find along the way, too, including those for hip-hop, Reggaeton and even
dedicated yodelers. (Unfortunately, there are no cameos for Prog Rock or Crunk.)
It’s the Rock Trolls that start the trouble in "World Tour." Their leader, Queen Barb (Rachel
Bloom), sets out to dominate the other groups. Armed with heavy-metal power chords and Metallica-esque
bombast, Queen Barb plots a rock reign to drown out the other styles.
The plot gives "World Tour" an opportunity to cycle through countless hits, and it does so so
speedily that the film often feels less like a story than an impatient, candy-colored battle of the
bands. When it slows down, and allows more than a snippet of a song, "Trolls World Tour" is
more enjoyable. There’s a good hip-hop interlude and a fine Kelly Clarkson country ballad.
Both "Trolls" movies exuberantly exalt the glories of diversity, and maybe some young ones will
get a decent primer on a musical landscape far more vast than Kidz Bop. But "World Tour" can
also sound like a bad Grammy medley that puts every genre into a blender until all the taste is rung
out.
"Trolls World Tour," a DreamWorks Animation release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture
Association of America for some mild rude humor. Running time: 110 minutes. Two stars out of four.
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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
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