With more sparkles than an Liberace tribute act, the third Trolls film is the franchise’s trippiest yet. A mind boggling feature of the sort students will one day discover to be best experienced while high as kites. Few films this year will offer cinematography so chromatically effervescent, nor a soundtrack so mercilessly upbeat. It’s hard to imagine any other family flick this decade will force the BBFC to warn of ‘sex references’ – and they are pretty darn filthy when you spot them. Yup, Band Together is, without question, total mayhem. Hogwash too. Broken down, the film is incoherently plotted, structurally baffling and tonally nauseating. More notably, however, it is also cinematic Stockholm Syndrome in action. These Trolls (still) just want to have fun and their joie de vivre is (still) hugely infectious.
The story picks up mere days on from the close of the last. It might as well be years. King Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) are to wed Anna Kendrick’s peppy Queen Poppy is, of course, to be maid of honour. Cue a ferociously auto-tuned royal wedding, unto which the bride floats, dressed head to toe in a gown of white balloons, each primed to explode in a cacophony of glitter. Trippy. It’s at this point, the extravaganza is interrupted by one of tetchy but loveable, Branch’s (Justin Timberlake) four long-lost brothers. The quintet used to make up a wildly popular boy band ‘back in the day’ – BroZone – but disbanded on failing to find harmony in their divergent personalities. They hit the backstreets.
John Dory (Eric André) – the group’s leader – brings terrible news. Sensitive bro, Floyd (Aussie singer Troye Sivan), has been kidnapped by the talentless fame seeking siblings Velvet (Amy Schumer) and Veneer (Andrew Rannells), who seek to steal his vocal talents for their own nefarious ends. Only by reuniting BroZone can Branch and John Dory – plus Poppy and, for no obvious reason, Kenan Thompson’s hip hop Troll Tiny Dancer – save Floyd, who is, of course, pink haired. Pink Floyd…gettit?
What follows amounts to little more than a treasure map road trip. There are jolly jaunts through a series of new Troll realms and various new faces to meet. The most memorable of these is the Camila Cabello voiced Viva, who rules over an abandoned crazy golf course and just happens to be Poppy’s long lost sister. Every other scene features a song, with Timberlake again on soundtracking duties. It’s a fairly anaemic set list this time around, with no particular mash up striking a chord. The film’s original song offering – Better Place – is notable only for ransoming reuniting NSYNC, some two decades on from their own disbandment. It seems unlikely that Timberlake had to ride a giant caterpillar through a two-dimensionally animated hustle-verse to get his band back together. It’s no Can’t Stop the Feeling.
Once again, tremendous animation elevates the gleeful gaudiness. There’s marvellous texture to all in the Troll universe, from the felty Trolls themselves to a realm made of jelly beads and land where folk have fine grained ropes for hair. The baddies are made of shiny porcelain, while they’re put upon assistant, who is voiced by Zosia Mamet, crinkles around like a mop head of corrugated cardboard. It’s all delightfully tangible. The want to reach out and stroke is high and it’s little wonder the wee pop lovers have proven so thoroughly marketable. Perhaps things have gone somewhat in the old plot department but, in the immortal words of Poppy herself, ‘our story’s complicated, who cares?’ Just sniff it in. Your. Eyes. Will. Pop.