Trolls (2016)

If you’re quarantined with kids — or if you’re a kid at heart who enjoys Dreamworks animation movies — Trolls: World Tour (2020, Prime Video, Vudu, Fandango) is a sweet, singalong distraction with several positive messages. You don’t need to have seen the first Trolls movie to enjoy this one, but if you have seen it you’ll be pleasantly reunited with some favorite characters.

The premise of Trolls: World Tour is not mind-bogglingly complicated; this is a kids’ movie, after all. Once upon a time, there were six musical strings: Techno, Funk, Classical, Country, Rock, and Pop. Because the original Trolls started fighting over which musical style was best, they split into factions and took their strings with them. And now, for reasons not fully explained, the Rock Trolls want to take over the other factions and turn them all into rock zombies. Our pink heroine Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) of the Pop Trolls mistakes Rock Queen Barb’s (Rachel Bloom) warning of impending colonization as an invitation and sets out to make a new BFF. It’s only when Poppy and her sidekick/boyfriend Branch (Justin Timberlake) discover the devastated land of the Classical Trolls does she realize Barb maybe doesn’t have good intentions. Poppy’s mission now flips from wanting to create Troll unity to stopping Barb before she destroys all the Trolls.

There are two other subplots, as well. In the first, the four-legged, long-necked Cooper (Ron Funches) sets off to find more Trolls like himself (spoiler alert: he finds them, and it’s super awesome); and Barb, upon hearing that Poppy is out to stop her, sends four sets of bounty hunters after her pop counterpart, including Smooth Jazz (Jamie Dornan), Reggaeton (J Balvin, Berenice Amador, and Jamila Hache), K-Pop (actual K-Pop group Red Velvet), and Yodeling Trolls (spoilers here).

For the first few minutes, Trolls: World Tour feels like your run-of-the-mill saccharine kids’ movie about getting along, tolerance, and finding courage. But it very quickly becomes a pretty woke message about celebrating differences and being a good listener.

As a leader, Poppy is already strong-willed and courageous. She doesn’t need to find those qualities within herself this time. Instead, her journey in Trolls: World Tour becomes about listening to those who want to help you. Everyone who loves Poppy offers her good advice, and her response is to consistently shut them out when she doesn’t like what they have to say. She bull-headedly charges ahead with her own plans no matter how that might affect the people with her. This fact is pointed out to her multiple times by multiple friends until Poppy finally gets it.