The first Trolls movie was surprisingly deep, especially considering how absolutely silly it was. It was an allegory of sorts about online trolls, and how their feeding off of others goodness leaves them more or less soulless. I had almost completely forgotten about the film when it came time to watch the latest installment in the franchise, Trolls World Tour, and within about 10 minutes of watching it I discovered that this too, was going to be rife with social commentary. However, its emotional core doesn’t sell that commentary particularly well.

The film starts out with the discovery that there are other lands of trolls, each representing distinct musical genres: techno, classical, country, funk, rock, and pop. When queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) discovers that the Hard Rock Kingdom and their queen are trying to “unite all trolls under Rock” she decides to do what many protagonists in a DreamWorks sequel does: try to reason with the antagonist using idealism as their ally. Poppy also discovers that her name has meaning in that she is the queen of the Pop kingdom.

The journey that our protagonists take through each musical genre is pretty fun, with lots of “inside” genre jokes. Although, many of them involve superficial stereotypes, which seems to defy a central troll tenant of not judging a book by its cover. The filmmakers definitely decided to keep the precedent of having a musician (Justin Timberlake’s Branch reprise) as voice actors. However, it got a bit weird that they got a pop singer Kelly Clarkson to play the main Country queen. Sure, she can sound “country”, yet the theme of the film is that every genre should respect the others: both literally and as a metaphor for how we treat each other. But why not choose a country singer if we should respect the genre?

Another theme of the film is reckoning with discovering how incomplete or bias our vision of history was. History is often much grayer than we initially understand without the clear-cut heroes and villains that our lizard brains want out of a story. Learning this truth is part of becoming a mature human but it doesn’t mean that it’s not hard to go through. The film tries to portray this rite passage in Poppy, but it doesn’t feel raw enough to actually make the audience feel its impact.

The co-director of the first film Walter Dohm is the sole director of this sequel, and there is definitely a tone shift. It is not quite as silly as its predecessor, weirdly to its detriment. It is far less funny despite it having a more polished script. Oddly, it feels very similar in its shift as happened from the first How to Train Your Dragon to the second (another DreamWorks franchise), but to remarkably different results. It doesn’t have the same emotional catharsis that the True Colors climax had in the first film.

As the premise would suggest, there are plentiful songs from all the genres. However, the difference from the original is that it felt like more of a mix of original songs with covers, whereas World Tour is almost entirely original compositions. This change was jarring and honestly a letdown. The jukebox soundtrack of the first was part of its appeal and none of the new music even holds a candle to the classics they could have harnessed.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Trolls World Tour is fun and clever enough for a DreamWorks animated feature. It tries pretty hard to preach multiculturalism in the modern era but doesn’t take any risks with its emotional depth.