We Saw 20 Minutes From the Animated Musical ‘Trolls’ — Here’s What We Thought
(Photo: DreamWorks)
In the great toy-to-movie race, Warner Bros. has Legos, Paramount has Hasbro, Legendary has Pokemon, and DreamWorks has the Trolls. C’mon, don’t pretend that you don’t have a ton of Trolls stashed away in your house. The brainchild of Danish woodcutter Thomas Dam, these tiny dolls with the wild hair have been staples of American toy departments since the ‘60s. And this November, they’ll headline their own animated moive featuring such A-list voices as Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Zooey Deschanel and James Corden. In addition to his voice-acting duties, Timberlake oversaw the film’s soundtrack as executive producer and contributed at least one original song.
Some of those stars were in San Diego this week for the Trolls’ Comic-Con International panel, where select scenes from the film were shown. Some of those same scenes comprised the 20 minutes worth of footage that Yahoo Movies recently saw, which points to how Trolls is seeking to separate itself from its toy-movie brethren like The Lego Movie. While that film was a relentlessly (and awesomely) self-aware joyride, Trolls appears to be a traditional animated fantasy, complete with a queen (voiced by Kendrick), a villain (the Troll-devouring Bergens, who were created for the film) and lots more singing and dancing. In addition to original compositions, the characters sing such familiar pop tunes as “True Colors,” “Dream a Little Dream of Me” and “The Sound of Silence,” the latter of which is sung by Kendrick in one of the standout musical moments included in the footage.
Watch the ‘Trolls’ trailer:
Singing and dancing is de rigueur in Troll Village, where the residents are happy all the time. They have to be; whenever a Troll gets sad, their bright colors fade to a dingy grey. To avoid that fate, every Troll wears a special watch that reminds them to do something that makes them happy — sing a little song, do a little dance, give a little hug — every hour. And no one is happier than Queen Poppy (Kendrick), the peppy pink ruler of Troll Village. On the opposite end of the Troll spectrum, no one is grouchier than Branch (Timberlake), the one Troll who doesn’t want to turn his frown upside down.
The mismatched duo embarks on a hero’s journey together when the evil Bergens kidnap Poppy’s pals. In one extended sequence we were shown, Poppy bounds through a meadow filled with hungry critters, singing a happy (and original) song about falling down and getting back up again. Beyond Kendrick’s strong singing voice, this scene highlights the movie’s appealingly arts-and-crafty visual aesthetic: It almost resembles one of the scrapbooks that the heroine is so fond of assembling. At one point, Poppy falls through giant spiders’ webs that resemble strings of yarn, and she’s surrounded by flora and fauna that look like they’re constructed out of cardboard and pipe cleaners. There’s also a prank-happy talking cloud (voiced by Walt Dohrn, who directed the film with Mike Mitchell) that’s the spitting image of the puffy tufts of cotton glimpsed in so many elementary school shoebox dioramas.
(Photo: DreamWorks)
Once they arrive in grim and gritty Bergentown, even the always-ebullient Troll queen has trouble keeping her spirits up. In a later clip, Poppy’s skin has acquired a somber grey hue, which is when Branch finally steps up to raise her spirits with a little Cyndi Lauper, crooning the lyrics of “True Colors” solo until she joins in. As they sing, Poppy’s face, arms and torso reacquire their pinkish hue, while Branch turns a bright blue. Kendrick and Timberlake performed the song live when Trolls screened footage in front of audiences at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and their voices blend together beautifully in the film as well. (Their odd couple comedy routine onscreen is slightly less convincing, though.)
Musical moments like this one will almost certainly be a big source of Trolls’ appeal to families, and it helps that the movie is beating Universal’s own cartoon musical Sing — which also makes copious use of hit pop songs — to theaters by a full month. Trolls may be a more familiar toy story than The Lego Movie, but its colorful characters and handmade universe should leave younger viewers feeling in the pink.
