three Public Service Announcement: Add this song to your motivational music playlist (alongside I’ll Make a Man Out Of You, When Will My Life Begin, and Almost There):
Good afternoon and Happy Saturday.
I SHOULD be working on my NaNoWriMo novel, because for the first time this month I am below par. However, I am bored of it. This happens to me every single time. I feel like writing something else. Also, since my last post I have gotten into the habit of listening to 2000’s emo rock instead of doing anything else.
So I’m writing this.
My sister dragged me to see Trolls despite my bellyachin’. She claimed we needed this rhetoric in these uncertain horrific times. I didn’t want to see it because the trailers were so tiresome. They highlighted crude humour and celebrity talent and as a general rule, I don’t enjoy crude humour and I don’t care about celebrity talent. Also, I don’t understand why Anna Kendrick has to be in everything. It’s not that I don’t like her. I just don’t understand.
Recently we did a bit of a thing in which we watched most of the Dreamworks trailers in hopes of finding a pattern of things we didn’t like. We didn’t find a lot (other than the highlighting of celebrity names), but there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between trailer integrity and movie integrity. Interestingly, some trailers made the movies look better than they were. Others made them look worse (Kung Fu Panda). The best took the movie seriously and at face value – like Rise of the Guardians and How to Train Your Dragon. However, these movies were out-performed by the likes of Madagascar and its hideous spin-offs.
In other words, Dreamworks doesn’t seem to have figured marketing out yet. It can’t get people into the theatres for its good movies, but it can fill theatres for the movie version of a pile of week-old kitchen garbage. We didn’t draw much of a conclusion except for this: You can’t judge a Dreamworks movie based on its trailer.
Thus, I got dragged out to see Trolls.
Trolls is Simple
There’s a reason I eat up sitcoms and rom coms and princess movies: I like straightforward plots in which the good guys win. They are familiar and positive, like the literary version of comfort food.
This is why I’m tired of people insisting that things like the Hunchback of Notre Dame is the standard which animated movies should strive for. Hunchback is a great movie, and yes, some nights I like to make myself a gourmet dinner and use all the dishes and all the spices to form a masterpiece. But every dinner can’t be gourmet, and every movie can’t be a dark and intense condemnation of all of society. Sometimes we just need nourishment for our bellies and our hearts.
Trolls is a nourishing movie. It’s about happiness. It’s about choosing optimism over cynicism. It’s the Dreamworks version of Tangled.
Trolls is Beautiful
Seriously. I don’t often find myself stopping mid-movie to admire the designs of the characters and settings, but this movie is gorgeous. Their use of colour fulfilled all the thematic purposes it needed to fulfill.
Trolls is Fun
At times the movie didn’t take itself seriously enough. One problem I consistently have with Dreamworks is that the movies often undercut their own sincerity.
On the whole, though, the movie has energy and enough sweetness to put a smile on your face.
All in all: Watch this movie if you feel like smiling. Not if you feel like thinking.
Having said that, we are going to analyze what may or may not have been a metaphor for vegetarianism/veganism soon. Eventually. Stay tuned.
Until we meet again,
three
