Trolls

TROLLS (Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn, 2016)

In TROLLS the tiny title characters are joyful creatures whose days are filled with singing, dancing, and hugging. Darkness enters their celebratory existences when the much larger, monstrous Bergen find the trolls and learn that eating them is the one way they can experience happiness. The Bergen set aside one day each year for eating trolls, but when the time comes for Prince Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to taste his first troll, the scrappy little optimists escape and go undetected for twenty years.

Their safety comes to an end when Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick), the happiest and most positive of all the trolls, puts on a massive rave noticeable from great distances. Chef (Christine Baranski), the Bergen who was banished from town when the trolls got away, sees the party. Excited at the chance to get back in the good graces of the Bergen, she tracks down the trolls and captures some. Poppy is determined to go to Bergen Town to save her friends and eventually is joined by Branch (Justin Timberlake), a pessimistic, survivalist troll who always suspected this horrible day would come.

TROLLS is rendered in eye-searing colors and features its share of trippy visuals, making the experience of watching it akin to mainlining Junior Senior’s impossibly peppy “Move Your Feet”, which Poppy sings as part of a buoyant pop medley. These small creatures with bright, upswept hair make no apologies for being cheerful, enthusiastic, and loving because they’ve identified that happiness comes from within rather than being consumed. There’s probably a mild contradiction in that message, as the film is based on toys after all. Nevertheless, TROLLS is more committed to being insistently upbeat and gloriously weird than shamelessly pushing product.

TROLLS’ unfiltered strangeness is one of its most appealing qualities. The humor holds appeal for adults because it’s so off-the-wall yet isn’t pitched at them. It simply indulges silliness to the nth degree. A sequence in which a cloud with skinny legs requests a high five from Branch in exchange for some critical information makes for a hilarious routine in which the gray troll is cajoled to make the smallest gesture of happiness. Kendrick’s perky voicing of Poppy and Timberlake’s glum Branch make a funny contrast.

The story in TROLLS is sufficient, although the film is best when it’s riffing and letting its freak flag fly. Pop music is cleverly incorporated and brings some additional energy to this sugar rush of a film.

Grade: B-

Kick-Ass 2

KICK-ASS 2 (Jeff Wadlow, 2013)

In KICK-ASS 2 a member of the supervillain’s posse slaughters a bunch of New York City policemen with increasingly violent methods for comedic effect.  Granted, the perpetrator is on the side of all that is bad, but the scene is undoubtedly meant to be funny.  Clearly we’re well past the time of post-9/11 sensitivity when The Strokes pulled a song from their debut album because of a third-person observation in the chorus about the NYC cops not being very smart.  That’s not to say that the men and women in blue get a lifetime pass for how they’re presented in art, but in this particular context, the glee with which they’re murdered and the positive audience identification with the killer is troublesome, to say the least.

KICK-ASS 2 doesn’t put forth mixed messages so much as it extols vigilanteism and revenge and then, after the climactic battle, tries to paper over the ugly sentiments with lip service about proper conduct.  Lest there be any uncertainty about where the film stands in its conflicting statements, the pretense of responsibility is ripped away in the final scene.  KICK-ASS 2 warns to do as it says, not as it does.  Then it distributes firearms, body armor, and a costume with an encouraging slap on the back.  

The sequel picks up with high school senior Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) having hung up his superhero uniform, but he can’t resist playing the hero again when he sees ordinary citizens following in the trail he blazed as Kick-Ass.  He begins getting back into crime-fighting shape under the rigorous training of freshman Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz), otherwise known as Hit-Girl, with the intention of them becoming a dynamic duo.  Plans for their alliance come to an end when her guardian, Detective Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut), insists that she devote her after school activities to traditional socializing rather than meting out street justice.

While Mindy struggles to fit into the in crowd, Dave finds a group of like-minded civilians who want to join forces to clean up the Big Apple.  Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey), a former mob enforcer turned born-again Christian with little tolerance for foul language, leads their so-called community service efforts.  Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) still seethes over Kick-Ass blasting his criminal father with a bazooka, so when he notices that Kick-Ass has resurfaced, he dons his mother’s fetish gear and dubs himself with an Oedipal, family publication-unfriendly name to refashion himself as the first supervillain with an accompanying crew of brutes.

Like its deluded, self-professed champions of public safety, KICK-ASS 2 fancies itself as something more admirable than it is.  How unsurprising for a film that stages a rape scene that uses framing and editing to empathize with the attacker even though the moment is ultimately played for laughs at his expense.  Rather than initiating a subversive conversation on superheroes and those who wish they could become them, KICK-ASS 2 indulges the worst power fantasies while also getting off on sociopathic behavior.

Grade: D+