91 min | PG | April 10, 2020 | Universal Pictures
Poppy and Branch discover that troll society splits into six musical tribes, and a rock queen wants to melt them all into one anthem. The film preaches that every genre deserves to survive on its own terms. Then it runs every last one of them through the same pop blender.
Poppy and Branch live as pop trolls in a world they assume is all pop. They learn that troll society splits into six tribes, each built around a single genre of music. Barb, the queen of the rock trolls, sets out to absorb every other tribe into one loud rock anthem. The film stages this as a war and frames it as a parable about diversity. Its real subject is assimilation. The script asks whether harmony requires erasing difference, then spends most of its energy on a medley of licensed songs that flattens the very distinctions it claims to defend.
Anna Kendrick plays Poppy with relentless optimism that the film never lets her complicate. Poppy treats every tribe as a friend waiting to happen, and Kendrick delivers the cheer at one volume. Justin Timberlake plays Branch as the cautious counterweight, and his deadpan worry gives the duo its only friction. Rachel Bloom plays Barb with genuine menace and the sharpest comic timing in the cast. She turns a cartoon villain into the one character with a coherent point of view. Sam Rockwell plays Hickory, a country troll who carries a secret, and Ron Funches gives Cooper a gentle searching quality as he hunts for his origins.
Walt Dohrn directs the animation in saturated felt-and-fabric textures that give every surface a handmade craft-store look. The design is the strongest element. Strings, scrapbook cutouts, and glitter read as physical objects rather than slick computer renders. The script by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger keeps cutting between tribes before any of them register, so the editing never lets a location breathe. Each genre world arrives, performs one number, and vanishes. The pacing treats every scene as a runway to the next song.
The film argues that different kinds of music deserve to survive on their own terms. Then it processes country, funk, techno, and classical through the same pop arrangement and the same frantic montage. The contradiction sits at the center and the film never notices it. There is a smarter movie here about how mass culture swallows everything it claims to celebrate. This one performs the swallowing instead of examining it. It moves fast, sings constantly, and says less than it thinks.