Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Trolls Band Together’ on Peacock, A Threequel Stuffed With Visual Tomfoolery and Cutesy Karaoke

Trolls Band Together (now streaming on Peacock) is the new entry in an assault-on-the-senses animated-jukebox-musical franchise that seems to be losing a little popular steam after eight years of movies, series, TV specials and soundtracks. It probably needed a little extra PR goosing to get people interested in this, the third feature film, hence its status as the official one-off *NSYNC reunion that EVERYONE was clamoring for, right? Sure. Trolls mainstay voice actor Justin Timberlake finds himself surrounded with his four former bandmates, getting nostalgic while performing a new song, their first in what feels like, oh, at least 400 million-zillion years. Oh, and there’s a plot and a couple dozen more name actors doing voiceover work here, if you care about that – and why would you? Nevertheless, I persist with the following review.

TROLLS BAND TOGETHER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: BEHOLD, THE SECRET HISTORY OF BRANCH (TIMBERLAKE), OUR TROLLS PROTAGONIST: Once upon a time, he was a member of BroZone, a boy band consisting of our protag and his four brothers, who, absolutely inexplicably other than the film’s apparent desire to be utterly overstuffed with big-name voice talent, are not played by *NSYNC, but rather, by Kid Cudi, Troye Sivan, Daveed Diggs and Eric Andre. Branch was a literal baby in diapers at the time. And BroZone’s failure to hit “the perfect family harmony” – a tone so powerful it can “shatter diamond,” a casually tossed-off throwaway line that you may not want to forget – caused a breakup so bitter, the brothers were never even mentioned in the previous two Trolls movies, or the two Trolls TV series, or the two Trolls holiday specials, or the six Trolls shorts. And so it makes sense that now, here, in the present day, it is established that Branch isn’t one to share his feelings, even with his sweet peppy S.O. Poppy (Anna Kendrick). My advice to Branch is, bro, learn to talk about your shit, or that relationship will be roadkill, squashed flat on the interstate by the 18-wheeler of noncommunication.

There’s some utterly inconsequential nonsense about the marriage of the snaggletoothed Bergen Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) to another Bergen, and here’s a reminder that in this universe, Trolls are cute and musically inclined with hair that sticks straight up, and Bergens are more akin to the ugly trolls living under bridges that we remember from children’s storybooks. The marriage has almost nothing to do with the plot, but the introduction of two villains does: Velvet and Veneer (Amy Schumer and Andrew Rannells) are two total j-holes, twin siblings who’ve been big-time pop stars for two whole months and are therefore getting a lifetime achievement award. Hear that? That’s satire, motherfathers!

And so we happen upon the plot, which may be used as evidence that its writers were consuming some kind of dangerous designer drug: Velvet and Veneer have kidnapped one of the BroZone brothers, trapping him in a diamond perfume bottle with a spray bulb, which extracts his Essence of Troll and gifts them with the mighty pop-music singing powers that guarantees them fame and fortune and the false dream that said fame and fortune will allow them to achieve ultimate happiness, the classic American Dream beartrap we all have allowed to clamp onto our calves and dig in and never let go because it’s so ingrained in the collective national psyche. Anyway, Branch catches wind of this and gathers up his remaining uncaptured brothers so they can go rescue the poor guy. Poppy goes along for the ride, all of them hurtling through a series of hallucinatory set pieces in a fully furnished armadillo RV that’s alive and runs along on a bunch of legs like the Catbus. This all leads to a scene in which Branch utters the line “If this diaper were any smaller, I could taste it,” which I’ve puzzled over for weeks in a fruitless attempt to make it make sense. Like I said, dangerous designer drugs.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Bob’s Burgers beat everyone to the boy band spoof; Turning Red probably did it best. Otherwise, the Sing movies drafted on Trolls’ pop-musical formula. And I haven’t struggled to pull a recognizable visual reference point among the otherworldly visuals since Ant-Man: Quantumania.

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: I swear Anna Kendrick’s voice has been sped up 2.3x for this particular role. 

Memorable Dialogue: One of the BroZone brothers laments the group’s inability to come together: “We’re not in sync. We’ve gone from boys to men and now there’s only one direction for us to go: the backstreets.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Trolls Band Together maintains franchise continuity by coupling a gnat’s chamberpotful of plot with bountiful visual extravagance, which ranges from the usual felty craft-store textures to the Gumbyesque design of the villains and the 2D-animated sequence referencing Yellow Submarine. It’s just this side of psychedelia, and I’d even go so far as to say this is actual, dyed-in-the-wool capital-A Artistry, which is prevalent throughout the Trolls films, and is its calling card if you’re an adult who’d rather watch these movies with your fingers jammed in your ears so as not to be subject to glossed-up mashy mixes of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” and the theme song to Fame, and shit like that.

Which is to say the movie looks great while inspiring us to not give a single damn about what happens to these characters, whose obnoxiousness has only grown since the first Trolls debuted eight years ago. Notably, the much-hyped brand-new *NSYNC number doesn’t arrive until movie’s end, so there’s at least something from which to draw a little dramatic tension, since the story offers almost nothing on that end. In fact, this movie made me feel like I had just watched nothing at all, and that seems to be its M.O.: in-the-moment diversions that you might laugh at or sing along with, mindlessly.

If you’re so inclined to peel at least a teensy layer of protein from the Trolls Band Together bones, you could read it as an unfocused music-biz spoof, an unfocused cautionary tale about the pursuit of perfectionism, an unfocused missive about the strength of family and/or an unfocused assertion that you should always unapologetically be yourself. The first might tickle adults here or there, and the latter three may find traction with younger audiences who maybe have only heard similar sentiments in other movies a few dozen times in their short lives. At least they’re warm, well-meaning missives, right? Not that you’ll really remember them, although there’s the concern that they’ll sink in subconsciously, which might explain why I walked away from the movie with Weezer’s “Island in the Sun” earworming me like the nasty grub thing in The Wrath of Khan. Which is to say, the movie is fine. Watch it or don’t watch it, I don’t care.

Our Call: Trolls Band Together is pretty much just like the other Trollses. It’s a perfectly acceptable 90 minutes of middling entertainment, so sure, go ahead and STREAM IT. But at this point, I’ve had enough Trolls shenanigans. Have you?  

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.