Trolls Band Together, the third installment in the Trolls series, produced by Dreamworks Animation, is a colorful, upbeat movie for children and adults alike. 

Here’s a quick recap of the first two movies, before I get into the third installment:

In the original movie, Trolls, the Bergens are a species of creature that tends to live a sad and depressing life. That is, except for one day a year, called Trollstice. The trolls, on the other hand, are the happiest creatures in existence; they give off happiness when they’re eaten. During Trollstice, the trolls are cooked and eaten so that the Bergens can have one day of happiness.

On the day of Trollstice, King Peppy leads the trolls underground to escape being harvested for the Bergens’ dinner.  

On the 20th anniversary of the trolls escaping the Bergens, Poppy—King Peppy’s daughter—decides to throw a big party to celebrate. When this party is thrown, the Bergen chef hears the commotion and sees the lights, so he stomps down to the tree where the Trolls live and snatches up a few of Poppy’s friends. 

Poppy tries to get Branch, a troll who is terrified of Bergens and lives in a bunker, to help save her friends. He refuses at first, but eventually joins her. They go on a long, hard journey to the castle in which Trollstice is being held, but end up being captured and put in a pot to be cooked along with the other trolls who were kidnapped.

When it seems like all hope is lost, a Bergen, that Poppy had made friends with, releases all the trolls in the pot. Poppy then goes out to where the Bergens are planning to feast and convinces them that they don’t need to eat trolls to be happy. 

In Trolls World Tour, there are five other different kinds of music trolls including, country, funk, techno, rock, and classical. Poppy and Branch find out that they are pop music trolls.

 King Thrash and his daughter Queen Barb, hard rock trolls, want to destroy all other kinds of music so that hard rock will be the only kind of music to exist. To do this, they must steal a magical guitar string from each of the genres.

Branch and Poppy gather up all their friends for a road trip to unite all of the music trolls against the rock trolls. They meet trolls from all the genres, plus a few other tribes such as K-pop and reggaeton. 

Eventually, all but the pop trolls’ guitar strings are stolen, after Queen Barb captures Poppy and takes the final string. She puts Poppy in a cage above the stage where she will give the concert that will transform all music into rock. Playing on this guitar basically brainwashes all the trolls so that they are just standing there in a trance. However, Poppy has gumdrops protecting her from the music and escapes the cage.

She ridicules Queen Barb for not caring for the Trolls she rules over and smashes the guitar. The movie ends with a big concert where all the genres of Trolls harmonize and make peace. Branch also asks Poppy to be his girlfriend, something that had been highly anticipated since the first movie.

The third movie might be my favorite movie in the franchise. It starts with Branch learning that one of his brothers, Floyd, has been kidnapped.

Poppy and Branch set off trying to get Branch’s three brothers together to save Floyd. Floyd had been captured by two evil siblings trying to become pop stars with no talent, who used a perfume-like device to spritz a little bit of Floyd’s talent every time they performed. 

It has an incredible soundtrack, with Camilla Cabello, Kid Cudi, Anna Kendrick, NSYNC, and Justin Timberlake. It is vibrant and upbeat, just like the movie. One song, Better Place, by NSYNC has become especially popular on TikTok.

The movie had a well-thought-out plot, better than the other two movies. Overall, it was very well put together, from the soundtrack to the carefully developed plot. There was a lot of good character development in this movie, and I appreciated the backstory to Branch, which I felt had been neglected in the past two movies.

Overall, Trolls Band Together did not disappoint! It earns 5/5 stars from me. The graphics, soundtrack, casting, and character development really made this a great movie for anybody and everybody.