Trolls Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Trolls Blu-ray Movie Review

Smurfs By Any Other Color...

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 7, 2017

Those little trolls are making a big comeback because of the succinctly titled Trolls, the latest DreamWorks Animation movie based on those tiny, colorful, big-haired creatures that were so popular back in the day as distracting pencil toppers or charming backpack dongles. Of course, now -- thanks market saturation merchandising -- they're everywhere, tied into the new movie and transformed from pop culture phenomenon to the last digitally animated film craze. Their movie doesn't find much of a unique identity, though. Part catchy-Pop Justin Timberlake-produced Musical, part Smurfs, part Barbie films, it's about little beings forced to hide from much larger bad guys that want to eat them to consume their innate happiness. It's ridiculously and diversely colorful, much like the Barbie universe. In other words, it has everything little kids are going to go crazy for. The movie proper just isn't of much value beyond the flash and splashes of color. It's fun but rather generic, bland beyond its colors, but a baseline satisfying little jaunt through the motions as it explores themes of personal identity and finding happiness.

Yay!

The trolls are a happy bunch of colorful little creatures who love to sing, dance, hug, and be happy. And that's pretty much their entire world. But one day, a Bergen finds them. Bergens are the opposite: large, ungainly, lacking color or humor or cheerful expressiveness. And they definitely don't hug or dance. The only way the Bergens can apparently be happy is by eating trolls. They make the troll's majestic tree the center of their civilization and hold an annual festival in which they consume their diminutive captives. But this year, the trolls manage to escape en masse. Twenty years pass and the trolls have lived at peace. Princess Poppy (voiced Anna Kendrick) is amongst the most carefree and buoyant. Opposite her is the colorless, conspiracy driven Branch (voiced by Justin Timberlake) who has prepared for the day the Bergens will most assuredly return. And that day is today. The trolls party just a little too loudly and colorfully and catch the attention of a Bergen named Chef (voiced by Christine Baranski), a mean-spirited creature who attacks the trolls and takes several of them prisoner. Now, Poppy and Branch have no choice but to team together, infiltrate Bergen territory, and rescue their friends before they become a Bergen Happy Meal.

The movie does a fairly good job of finding a balance between the extremes on both sides, the happy-go-lucky colorful trolls and the dour, sour, blandly colored Bergens. It's never much of a secret how the film will play out and what it will have to say from a thematic perspective, particularly as it focuses on one troll who has lost his color and spark -- literally and figuratively -- and a Bergen who finds her cheer with a little help from the trolls. In fact, one can almost not help but to feel for the Bergens on some level. Sure they're the big bad villainous goofs with crooked teeth, but their actions are at least understandable. They just want to be happy. They're just going about it the wrong way, and they've never been told differently or had the opportunity to learn from their prey, not just consume them. Yet it's all very transparent as the movie maneuvers through the usual animated fare ebbs and flows of high points and low points, a roller coaster of manufactured emotions and plot contrivances that open up new character details while still remaining firmly entrenched in cliché. It wants to be Inside Out but never finds nearly enough dramatic or structural muscle to push out a story of substance, settling instead for simple gags, catchy tunes, and barrages of cuteness and color with just enough offsetting peril to dazzle the young ones.

Even the movie's technical wizardry doesn't offer enough novelty to prove enticing. The film's visuals admittedly feel fresh (the felt-style texturing is very attractive), but beyond the surface there's not much here that catches one's attention. The trolls themselves are a known commodity and the Bergens are just sort of the standard-fare ogre-type creatures that look like a cross between something out Shrek and the Skeksis. Environments aren't imaginative, either, and even the barrage of color, cheer, and character quirks, particularly from tertiary characters who are essentially repeated one-hit gags, don't prove all that enticing. Add that to the straightforward core story and the tried-and-true themes that are explored to satisfaction but without any appreciable novelty, not to mention stagnant character depth that's only interesting enough to prop up the story and propel it forward, and the end result is a film sure to dazzle kids but more than likely to bore adults who will pine for the better movies in this class and wonder which old-is-new property is next on the list.

Trolls Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Trolls is an insanely colorful movie and its palette is its most obviously defining asset. The movie was made to sparkle -- quite literally, in some instances -- with a barrage of bling, abundantly bold primaries, and all sorts of nifty little nuanced and aggressive shades of purple, orange, or practically any color under the rainbow. Color diversity is a strength, at least around the trolls. The Bergens are more flatly colored, almost a monstrous vomit-colored green with various earthy support shades around. No matter the place or the color, the Blu-ray delivers it all with abundant definition and pop. Detailing is good, too, presenting all the little textural nuances on troll hair and flesh, and on Bergens, for that matter, with practically as much complexity as the source material has to offer. Image clarity is outstanding, and elements near and far alike reveal superb attention to detail. A bit of aliasing is evident throughout, admittedly in scant quantities and often hard to spot but dense enough that videophiles may be bothered. The target audience, won't care, however. The Blu-ray delivers everything they could want in a picture, and then some.

Trolls Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Fox/DreamWorks have pulled a Sony with this release of Trolls, failing to offer the top soundtrack on the Blu-ray and instead saving it for the UHD release. As it is, the included DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack is fine, perhaps not quite so dynamic and seamless as it might have been but never wanting for more precision or clarity. Spacing is excellent. The stage opens up with effortless width and depth alike, presenting all of the music -- whether more intimate slow songs or spunky Pop beats -- with incredible stage saturation, spacing, surround envelopment, and when necessary (which is often), low end depth. Bass can be significant in music and action alike, with various sounds proving substantially impactful during the most treacherous moments in the battle between Trolls and Bergens. Subtle environmental atmospherics are pleasantly involved though often relegated to far background duty. The film is very dialogue-heavy outside of music and a few action scenes. The spoken word is presented clearly and with perfect prioritization from the front-center channel.

Trolls Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Trolls contains a few deleted scenes, some tech-specific supplements, and several kid-centric features. Also included under the "Play" button is Party Mode, which offers a variety of in-film extras including sing-along songs, a prompt to hug anyone watching, and various surprises available when the yellow, red, green, and blue buttons are promoted on-screen and subsequently pressed on the remote. A DVD copy of the film and an iTunes digital copy code are included with purchase.

• Travel Through Troll Village (1080p, 4:43): Cloud Guy hosts a tour through one of the film's primary locations and introduces several key characters along the way.
• The Potion for Stop-Motion (1080p, 5:06): An introduction to some of the amazingly diverse materials used to make stop-motion, scrapbook-y trolls and environments for one of the film's key sequences. It also looks at the process of building them. Arts-and-crafts fans will love this feature.
• Creating Troll Magic (1080p, 5:21): Another piece that looks at some of the more in-depth processes involved in, and inspirations for, building the look of the trolls. It also covers the importance of storyboards, pre-viz, and the various additional digital processes necessary to give the film its finished look.
• Inside the Bunker (1080p, 2:54): Cloud Guy returns to look through Branch's doomsday bunker.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p, 7:24 total runtime): The directors introduce a few cut scenes in various stages of completion.
• Troll 2 Troll (1080p, 4:46): Poppy and Branch debate a few questions of great import to the world, like "cat or dog?" and "mousse or gel?."
• Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:05):
• The World of DreamWorks Animation (1080p): Music videos and more from Shrek, Madagascar, How To Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, The Croods, Turbo, and Home.

Trolls Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Trolls is in no way a bad movie, offensive, dull, or anything of the sort. It's just trite. Little imagination, commendable but blandly explored themes, simple caricatures, uninteresting construction...the movie is good enough to hold one's interest and keep the kids happy, singing, and pining for that themed lunch box or backpack, but parents will probably find the movie a fairly empty experience. This 20th Century Fox/DreamWorks Blu-ray release of Trolls does feature the expectedly high-end video, solid lossless audio (but absent the Atmos track from the UHD), and a decent smattering of extras that include a few technical and kid-friendly bonuses. Recommended to families, but grown-ups will probably want to chase it with something more substantial from Pixar.