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Film Data
Trolls World Tour  2020
Trolls 2
Director:  Walt Dohrn, with David P. Smith
Producer:
  Gina Shay
Art Director:
  Timothy Lamb
Editor:
  Nick Fletcher
Music:
  Theodore Shapiro (original)
Screenplay:
  Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, and Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarksy, and Elizabeth Tippet, based on a story by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, based on the Good Luck Trolls created by Thomas Dam
slideshow
Cast:
spacer1 Anna Kendrick
Voice
spacer1 Justin Timberlake
Voice
people1 Sam Rockwell
Voice
spacer1 Rachel Bloom
Voice
spacer1 Kelly Clarkson
Voice
people1 Zooey Deschanel
Voice
spacer1 Kunal Nayyar
Voice
spacer1 George Clinton
Voice
spacer1 Kenan Thompson
Voice
spacer1 Jamie Dornan
Voice
spacer1 James Corden
Voice
spacer1 Mary J. Blige
Voice
spacer1 Ron Funches
Voice
spacer1 Walt Dohrn
Voice
spacer1 Karan Soni
Voice
spacer1 Ozzy Osbourne
Voice
spacer1 Flula Borg
Voice
spacer1 Anthony Ramos
Voice
spacer1 Anderson Paak
Voice
spacer1 J Balvin
Voice
spacer1 Anna Kendrick spacer1 Justin Timberlake people1 Sam Rockwell
spacer1 Rachel Bloom spacer1 Kelly Clarkson people1 Zooey Deschanel
spacer1 Kunal Nayyar spacer1 George Clinton spacer1 Kenan Thompson
spacer1 Jamie Dornan spacer1 James Corden spacer1 Mary J. Blige
spacer1 Ron Funches spacer1 Walt Dohrn spacer1 Karan Soni
spacer1 Ozzy Osbourne spacer1 Flula Borg spacer1 Anthony Ramos
spacer1 Anderson Paak spacer1 J Balvin spacer1
spacer1 Anna Kendrick spacer1 Justin Timberlake
people1 Sam Rockwell spacer1 Rachel Bloom
spacer1 Kelly Clarkson people1 Zooey Deschanel
spacer1 Kunal Nayyar spacer1 George Clinton
spacer1 Kenan Thompson spacer1 Jamie Dornan
spacer1 James Corden spacer1 Mary J. Blige
spacer1 Ron Funches spacer1 Walt Dohrn
spacer1 Karan Soni spacer1 Ozzy Osbourne
spacer1 Flula Borg spacer1 Anthony Ramos
spacer1 Anderson Paak spacer1 J Balvin

Synopsis:

Retitled from Trolls 2, obviously not wanting to steal any of the spotlight from Claudio Fragasso’s famous / infamous Filmirage production Troll 2, Trolls World Tour holds an unfortunate entry in the tomes of cinematic history, in being the first major tentpole theatrical release sent directly to streaming before any sort of US release due to the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak, having only briefly opened in Taiwan and Russia before shutdown, taking a total of $1.88m (@£1.5m), somewhat down, through understandable circumstances, on the first film’s global total of $346.86m (@£276.84m), as well as shifting a ton of merchandise.

Whether the gamble paid off financially may never officially be known, but it is believed that between three and five million people had streamed the film in the first nineteen days of VOD on a variety of digital platforms, taking some $95m (@£71.25m), of which some $77m (@£57.75m) would go to Universal Pictures, and the film was estimated to have brought in some $150m (@£112.5m) in online sales and rentals by August, when the relaxation of coronavirus restrictions on some countries had resulted in the re-openings of cinemas resulting in some theatrical bookings for the film in US drive-ins and China and South Korea, taking the global theatrical take to $12.43m (@£9.32m), but some experts believed that the film’s budget of $95m (@£71.25m) and the increased cost of a heavy marketing campaign once the VOD option was taken, may mean that Universal will struggle to make a profit.

Anybody who saw the first will know what to expect, DreamWorks not being in the business of providing radically different or revisionist sequels (see the Shrek. Kung Fu Panda and How To Train Your Dragon series). Linking the almost forgotten Trolls toy line with celebrity voiceovers and almost wall-to-wall musical numbers proved to be a successful formula, helmer Walt Dohrn, co-director of the first and who also provides a clutch of voices here, and David P. Smith, his first theatrical feature, obviously thinking that the ‘dance party’ endings of Shrek and it’s ilk were popular, then why not have a film in which there is a similar conglomeration every nine minutes or so, excused by introducing the six different Troll tribes - Funk, Techno, Classical, Country, Hard Rock, and Pop - each of course have to have their own vignette and musical number, and allowing for the inclusion of legitimate musicians such as George Clinton, Mary J. Blige, Swedish duo Icona Pop, Columbian reggaeton singer J Balvin, K-Pop band Red Velvet and, oddly, American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson, who probably sees herself as a pop star but is here cast as the humourless head of the Country Trolls.

Justin Timberlake, playing the reluctant love interest to Anna Kendrick’s Queen Poppy, is heavy represented in the cover-heavy soundtrack, appearing on eight out of the twenty tracks on the tie-in album, and while some tracks do emerge relatively intact, such as singer / songwriter Rachel Bloom, voicing Queen Barb, singing Heart’s Barracuda, The Scorpion’s Rock You Like A Hurricane and Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train, Hamilton star Anthony Ramos tackling Daft Punk’s One More Time, and oddly Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell crooning Patsy Cline’s I Fall To Pieces, there are also tracks entitled Atomic Dog World Tour Remix, with Clinton and Blige, Trolls 2 Many Hits Mashup and Trolls Wanna Have Good Times, a repurposed Troll-referencing version of Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, emphasising the karaoke / singalong air of the whole thing.

The plot, largely relayed by long stretches of voiceover, despite five listed screenwriters, is largely a structure on which to hang the song-and-animated dance numbers, while oddly taking a couple of relatively subtle swipes at both hard rockers, depicted as loud, overbearing and somewhat self-centred, and C&W fans, self-serious and intolerant, but also concedes that ‘Pop’ in all it’s forms, is largely an amalgamation of all sorts of genres, styles and influences.

Several critics noted that, following the first film, helmers Dohrn and Smith turn that pic’s elements up to ‘Max’, with retina-searing colours, countless celebrity voices, non-sequitur catchphrases, almost unbearable levels of peppiness and never being a few minutes away from a musical number / dance set-piece, The AV Club observing the studio ‘ …has cranked out dozens of feature films, but the Trolls series works hard to turn various DreamWorks tropes, touchstones, and clichés into a unified aesthetic…. Yet somehow, this shamelessness gives the whole enterprise a kind of deranged honor’.

It has to be said that it drew an assortment of critical response, from The Telegraph, enthusing ‘To watch it is to be waterboarded by joy. In terms of both visual dazzle and invention and sheer comedic stamina and pep, it handily surpasses the original Trolls from 2016, which itself set an impressive new standard for films based on novelty keyrings and pencil toppers’, to the more moderated Variety, ‘ …for all its surface pleasures, it's a likable but underimagined one, with more enthusiasm than surprise and, at the same time, an overprogrammed sense of its own thematic destiny’, and the venom of The San Francisco Chronicle, calling it ‘A movie with the power to freeze the mind and make anyone watching just want to stagger away mumbling nothing but ‘This is awful’, over and over, until the pain goes away’, but for the baffled parent in their living room, watching this saturated Technicolor cartoon / jukebox musical / dance display, just remember, it isn’t made for you.

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