Metacritic reviews

On all levels, Trolls delivers. It is nicely paced, the jokes are spot-on (and will work for both the kids and their parents) and, again, this is visually a very special piece of animated artistry.

It’s an ecstatically happy movie, a giddy EDM kiddie musical that sends you out on a high.

Trolls is a flashy, pre-fab product, but the animators are given just enough space to create moments of genuine artistry.

There’s more texture than might be expected from characters based on plastic dolls.

Trolls is not break-the-mould brilliant like The Lego Movie or Toy Story, or a keeper like Frozen. But it’s a lovable and giddy guilty pleasure.

If you’ve asked yourself why on earth there needs to be a movie about Troll dolls, this doesn’t really provide a strong answer, yet for all its awkwardness and fluff-brained logic, its enthusiasm is infectious.

The bad news, for anyone over the age of eight, is that it’s at its best disposable, and at its worst really, really annoying.

Trolls is a spectacularly empty fantasia of bad songs, bright lights, and militant happiness. But there’s no denying how well the film bludgeons you into submission when it gets into its groove.

If you could take the Shrek, Happy Feet and Smurfs movies, toss them in a blender and hit the pulse button a few times, the result would be a pretty reasonable approximation of Trolls, an admittedly vibrant-looking but awfully recognizable animated musical comedy concoction.

Combines the barely-there characterization and irritating cutesiness of “The Smurfs” with the hideous character design and awful pop covers of “Strange Magic.”