Trolls review: ★★★★★

Dreamwork's newest animated film Trolls may be ostensibly for kids, but the best way to understand it's insane plot is to imagine that you are a die-hard weekend clubber in your twenties with a serious drug problem. You take so many recreational drugs, in fact, that you have long since come to believe it's the only way to find happiness. Unless you're chugging down a variety of florescent, multi-coloured, and eye-wateringly potent pills whilst covered in glitter, joy evades you. You become dull, miserable and very angry. Nothing makes you feel good. Nothing. Only drugs.

One day, your stash of drugs escapes from the tree in the garden where you keep it. Poof. No more drugs. No more happiness. Life looses it's meaning. You go and stand in Infernos in Clapham expecting to have the worst night of your life. But actually the music has quite a good beat and you quite fancy the girl on the other side of the room. Eureka! Happiness outside of drugs! You decide to write a Dreamworks film starring Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake. It's a hit.


Trolls is the story of troll Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick), whose life is nothing but rainbows and cupcakes. She's insanely happy, as are all her friends – all except Branch, who has childhood abandonment issues.

The trolls are being hunted by the Bergens: monstrous revolting creatures who need a good wash and believe that eating a troll is the only way to be happy (does that drug thing make sense now?). When the ugliest and most horrible of the Bergens finds and trollnaps some of Poppy's friends, she sets off on an adventure to rescue them and bring them back, singing, dancing and scrapbooking along the way. Branch reluctantly agrees to help her.

Despite it's utter stupidity, Trolls has many a heart-warming moments and a smashing soundtrack. Poppy learns to be less... nauseating. Branch learns to love, and even the Bergens discover something along the way. Produced by the studio that brought us Shrek, Trolls is nowhere near as good as that film. But it has its moments.