Ok, I know what your thinking. But it was raining and blowing a near hurricane here in Sydney so we decided to go to the cinema and left the choice of movie up to our six year old boy. There was very little to choose from in fairness but he plumbed for Trolls World Tour.

Apparently this is the second movie in the Trolls franchise by the DreamWorks Animation company. Who knew? Not me. But the very fact that it was made by DreamWorks almost guaranteed that it was going to be good fun.

And so it was.

Generally movies made by companies like DreamWorks appeal to almost any age. Gone are the days of the old Disney animated movies made just (or at least mainly) for children. These days you can be sure that an animated film by either DreamWorks, Illumination (there is a new Minions movie out soon by the way) or Pixar will have enough for parents as well as the kids.
This was the case for Trolls World Tour. As usual the creative talent behind these modern animation films added their own adult sense of humour. It was funny enough to keep this old dad awake and my son enjoyed it far more than I thought he might. Which just goes to show…What do I know eh?

Basic Plot.
Colourful Pop trolls realise that the world is made up of six different types of trolls. Each with their own style of music. There’s country Trolls, Techno-trolls, Funk trolls, Classical trolls, Hard Rock trolls and themselves – the Pop music trolls.

Each tribe of trolls owns their own musical string but the Hard Rock Trolls are invading all the other territories, stealing all the strings as they go. Queen Barb (of the Rock tribe) knows that if they can get all the strings they can unite all trolls as one under Rock! Once the have all six strings they will be able to make some kind of super guitar like instrument and blast out the ultimate power chord. Which…. Spoiler ALERT (see below)! 

Queen Poppy of the Pop tribe takes their string and heads off to unite all the other tribes taking Branch (voiced by Justin Timberlake) with her. And that’s kind of it really. Timberlake is also one of the movie’s producers so there are plenty of daft pop song montages. But none of it is taken too seriously so it is mostly funny. 

What does that ultimate power chord do then?

Well the ultimate power chord changes anyone in hearing range into a hard rock zombie. Wicked eh?

Critique…

Overall it was an easy, watchable, 3 out of 5. Just about. Good fun for the kids and enough comical music stuff for the adults. The whole pace of the movie is spot on and the use of well known pop songs is mostly funny.

The one thing that annoyed me – and this is just a personal thing – was that one of the main characters is voiced by James Corden. I just can’t stand that bloke. Even the sound of his voice. Even typing this… Must stop!!!

That aside however…take your young kids to see this movie.