Trolls Holiday

Similarly high-octane music and graphics as the original Trolls, which we love, but some disturbing themes, as other reviewers have pointed out. My 3.5 year old still enjoyed it and wanted to watch again, but a lot of the jokes were going over her head and IMO inappropriate for her.

I have a 17 month old and a 4 yr old and we love the Trolls Holiday Special as well as the original Trolls movie. The special does have some adult humor but it's nothing that will scar children; it passed right by our kids but if they did ask about it, I'd have no issues explaining it to them. The messages about listening to what people are saying and how different people like different things are really important ones for little ones just starting to explore their independence. And man, that music is just awesome. We've listened to the soundtrack in the car on the way to daycare almost every day for the past few weeks. If you're concerned by some of the other reviews, by all means please watch it yourself before letting your kids watch it. Personally, our family thinks it's great.

The full length movie is much better than this holiday short. Trolls are shown being disrespectful to parents, hitting each other in the face repeatedly etc. I was very surprised considering that the original movie has more appropriate subject matter and because the common sense media review doesn’t mention these things.

The Trolls Holiday is full of disturbing imagery and themes and should not be shown to younger children. The animation, voice acting and cover songs all top notch, but many of the scenes seem to be aimed at adults, but are absolutely terrifying if taken at face value. I can only assume that the producers and director have never actually met a child. In an early scene the Trolls descend through a "wormhole" and have a psychedelic experience. They freak out and in a series of jump cuts terrified characters are juxtaposed with grotesque toy versions of themselves. The filmmakers are, for some reason, trying to pay homage to films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Willy Wonka and make a meta joke about the 80s toys. None of which a child could ever understand, leaving them with a series of traumatizing visuals. (Later on when a character is getting stressed out they use the close-up "shake" effect from Fight Club). The next scene features a rap that makes up most of the movie. One of the characters is tattooed against his will, zapped with electricity so that his skeleton is visible, shown in obvious pain as lasers and glitter hit is eyes, injured with a vacuum, and is slapped in the face so hard a tooth flies out. Another character rips off velcro stripper pants and we see his blurred-out genitals. The characters rap about "bleep" day when they can freely swear (censored in the film). At one stage a giant spider flies at the screen and starts vomiting hundreds of spiders that crawl over the characters, tickling them. If your child is old enough to understand common tropes and understand when that violence can be portrayed in an exaggerated fashion then Trolls might be OK for them, but I would recommend screening the first 15 minutes of the film in first.

My daughter loves this movie, and I do as well, it’s funny, fun to listen to and a very enjoyable family movie, I love the music. I’m usually not very strict with content, but for a movie geared towards children, I think they could have left out the “hug life” tattoo as well as “slap in the face” day and “bleep” day, and the “rip of your pants” day it’s all good for the rhyme but I personally don’t agree with having your children’s favorite characters talk about these things, depending on what content you want your children exposed too, that’s the only part I don’t necessarily agree with but overall it is a great movie!