Trolls

From the creators of SHREK comes DreamWorks Animation’s TROLLS, a smart, funny and irreverent comedy about the search for happiness, and just how far some will go to get it. This hilarious film transports audiences to a colorful, wondrous world populated by the overly optimistic Trolls, who have a constant dance in their step and a song on their lips, and the comically pessimistic Bergens, who are only happy when they have trolls in their stomachs. 

After the Bergens invade Troll Village, Poppy (Kendrick), the happiest Troll ever born, and the overly-cautious curmudgeonly Branch (Timberlake) set off on a journey to rescue her friends. Together, this mismatched duo embarks on a rescue mission full of adventure and mishaps – trying to tolerate each other long enough to get the job done.

Seeing this movie started out with my sister asking me if I wanted to see Dr. Strange, to which I responded that "I rather go see Trolls than Dr. Strange... but I guess there's nothing else out to see this week."  Which somehow lead us to this movie. I was pleasantly surprised at how, well, cute it is. 

Princess Poppy, voiced by Anna Kendrick, is throwing a celebration on the anniversary of the Trolls escaping from the evil Bergens, who eat trolls once a year to feel happy.  However, a Bergen, literally, crashes their party and kidnaps all of Poppy's friends.  Poppy has to enlist the help of the one negative Troll, Branch, voiced by Justin Timberlake, because he knows the most about the Bergens. 

The animation in this movie blew me away. One of the hardest things to animate is hair (the others are fire and water). Going in I knew this movie was going to have a lot of hair. I mean it is about Troll dolls. But ohmigod, everything was fuzzy. It looked like we were in one of Princess Poppy's scrapbooks. Everything was felt, yarn, or string. I wanted to pet everything. It was a really great, and impressive, creative decision for the movie.

I was also worried that the songs they would be singing would just be pop top 40, but I was again pleasantly surprised by all the song choices. (Which I will not spoil in case you one day watch this movie.) It had a cute story with a good message.  It was a very enjoyable children's movie overall. I also want a glittery Troll now. Why weren't there glittery Trolls when I was a kid? Why did I give away all my Trolls?

Here's a song to get stuck in your head for the rest of the day: