Metacritic reviews

To watch it is to be waterboarded by joy. In terms of both visual dazzle and invention and sheer comedic stamina and pep, it handily surpasses the original Trolls from 2016, which itself set an impressive new standard for films based on novelty keyrings and pencil toppers.

At times the humor feels elementary (and at others a little flat), but the story really finds itself when it weaves musical history into this road-trip tale in a captivating and entertaining manner.

It’s a stupid movie with deep ambitions, energized by that trippy neon palette, and the occasional hot beat.

Yet for all its surface pleasures, it’s a likable but underimagined one, with more enthusiasm than surprise and, at the same time, an overprogrammed sense of its own thematic destiny.

It feels too much like we’ve been here, done this already.

Despite the range of musical genres represented and the obsessive attention to visual detail, there is a bland, wearying homogeneity to the way Trolls World Tour looks and sounds.

It’s utterly harmless, even in its subtexts — that hip hop and funk are where ALL music comes together. If the kids are going stir crazy, give it a download.

If you thought the first Trolls movie was fine, you’ll probably find this fine too. It completely lives up to the watchable mediocrity of its predecessor.

There is something absolutely robotic about Trolls World Tour: the voices, the design, the dialogue, the plot progressions, the break-up-make-up crisis between Poppy and Branch, everything. It’s chillingly efficient, like a driverless car going round in circles.

As cheery as the whole affair can be, no amount of razzle-dazzle can distract from World Tour’s meagre storytelling — or the gnawing suspicion that the proceedings are targeting overstimulated young viewers who just want nonstop sensation.