Critic Reviews

It is sweet without being sugary, colorful, and very charming, with terrific voice talent and a lot of music. It’s the best of the three.

What resonates most about Trolls Band Together are its lessons about self-acceptance and letting go of perfectionism. It’s a great message for young kids to internalize, and perhaps a good reminder for adults in the audience, too.

Though Trolls Band Together mercilessly beats its familiar, tired message about the importance of family into the ground, it’s still surprisingly watchable with plenty of voice and singing talent.

Trolls Band Together is a glitter-encrusted variety pack of a movie. Packed with millennial boy-band humor, sibling love and snippets of pop songs, the third film in the Trolls franchise is an explosion of color tailored to a new generation of parents and their Gen Alpha kids.

While the plot often has a trudgy, through-the-motions feel, the same can’t be said for the animation itself, especially in the musical interludes.

The animation is strong, if too candy-coated, and the film is clever and funny from time to time. And parents might even find their own inner boy band fever ignited alongside their kids.

Sure the entire plot of Trolls Band Together and the movie’s best jokes are revealed in the trailer. But the movie’s target audience is the same audience that can watch Frozen 20 times. They certainly aren’t going to mind that they already know what is going to happen.

Trolls Band Together hits its chosen notes with its trademark glitter-drunk energy and some bonkers visual invention, but its mashing up of shiny pop hits (not to mention past Trolls movies) approaches exhaustion.

It’s a fairly standard-issue sequel which pads out its thin-to-invisible storyline with a number of self-consciously garish animated interludes all in varying styles.

Intriguing moments of animation experimentation and a new batch of characters just aren’t going to be enough to keep this series worthwhile. Right now, Trolls is going in one direction, and it needs to shake it up a bit more to make things in sync again.