Review: Watching ‘Trolls World Tour’? Bring ear plugs

Music sbbery is making a comeback.

On heels of excellent serial remake of “High Fidelity,” about a tasteful Brooklyn record store owner, comes “Trolls World Tour,” in which different pixie clans each representing a music genre vie for sonic domination. Both are quaint in ir own way, pretending that our musical borders didn’t years ago disintegrate into a digital soup.

“Trolls World Tour,” a sequel to 2016 DreamWorks original, had been planned for atrical release before coronavirus pandemic. On Friday, Universal Pictures instead released it straight into home, as a $19.99 digital rental — a rare breaking of atrical release window by a major studio.

That makes “Trolls World Tour” a kind of trial balloon, albeit a very glittery one. Is it worth it? That may depend on just how bored your housebound kids are. It is, at least, a shiny new object when re are few about.

Directed by Walt Dohrn, with co-director David P. Smith, “Trolls World Tour” is a sped up version of jukebox musical. It runs through so many songs that it might be better called a Spotify musical, with infinite skips.

Both “Trolls” movies can be hard to look at. y’re so garishly colored that I’d recommend dimming your TV set. But when y’re t too loud and you’ve sufficiently shielded your eyes, ir sugary highs are pleasant eugh and occasionally tuneful. An animated movie can do worse than indoctrinate ar generation to joys of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September.”

In “World Tour,” our original clan, including Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake), discover a wider world of trolls. trolls we kw believe in power of pop, but it turns out re are ors out re devoted to tech, classical, country, funk and rock. re are even or pockets y find along way, too, including those for hip-hop, Reggaeton and even dedicated yodelers. (Unfortunately, re are cameos for Prog Rock or Crunk.)

It’s Rock Trolls that start trouble in “World Tour.” ir leader, Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom), sets out to dominate or groups. Armed with heavy-metal power chords and Metallica-esque bombast, Queen Barb plots a rock reign to drown out or styles.

plot gives “World Tour” an opportunity to cycle through countless hits, and it does so so speedily that film often feels less like a story than an impatient, candy-colored battle of bands. When it slows down, and allows more than a snippet of a song, “Trolls World Tour” is more enjoyable. re’s a good hip-hop interlude and a fine Kelly Clarkson country ballad.

Both “Trolls” movies exuberantly exalt glories of diversity, and maybe some young ones will get a decent primer on a musical landscape far more vast than Kidz Bop. But “World Tour” can also sound like a bad Grammy medley that puts every genre into a blender until all taste is rung out.

“Trolls World Tour,” a DreamWorks Animation release, is rated PG by Motion Picture Association of America for some mild rude humor. Running time: 110 minutes. Two stars out of four.

Im credit: AP