I'll admit, when I saw Trolls on Netflix last year, I thought it would end up being a disappointment, but it turned out to be much better than the trailers. Sure, it didn't do anything new with it's story and the villain was pretty forgettable, but the main leads were likeable enough, the animation was cute, and the songs were good too.

So, when I heard that DreamWorks was going to make a holiday short, I was interested and hoped that it would be as good as the other holiday shorts like Gift of the Night Fury and the Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special. From what I got, it was decent enough and it's cute and charming in places. However, it's not exactly memorable as there are some problems that held Trolls Holiday back.

The story did feel predictable and at times a bit repetitive at parts, although I do admire it's attempt to stick to the holiday theme. Then, there's the pacing, which felt a bit rushed there wasn't enough time to breath and there's one song number that felt quite unnecessary (I'm not going to spoil to those who haven't seen it yet).

That being said, everything else is good. The animation is even more cute, the most of the song numbers are fine, the characters are charming like they were in the movie, and the voice work is spot on with Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake continuing to shine with their chemistry. Oh, and there are some funny moments which gave me a chuckle or two.

So, overall, not exactly as strong as Gift of the Night Fury and the Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special, but still cute and charming for kids to see. :)

"Trolls Holiday" is a 25-minute animated short film from very recently ago this year (2017) and this is a little add-on for the Christmas holidays that follows the successful 2016 Trolls full feature film. That one was nominated for an Oscar last year and this short sequel here also got a pretty nice deal of awards recognition already, mostly at the Annie Awards, the animation Oscars if you want to call them like that. The cast includes many names that voice-acted also on the full feature film, so it is really an impressive list of people for the most part. But still, I cannot really share the praise here. This under half an hour loses itself repeatedly in mostly forgettable music numbers and songs that stopped the film from developing a story line and plot that stays memorable whatsoever. It felt very disrupting to me. Plus I felt that the male trolls were totally underrepresented here, even if that female troll girl is definitely kinda charming and entertaining to watch. So overall, it is a work that you can simply here as an audio piece. Or better don't because the songs do so little. The animation was as good as I expected, but the story was never touching, relevant or at least interesting. It could have been if this was 25 minutes with just one song or so, but not the way they actually went for. Quite disappointing how much of a letdown this ended up to be. The already green-lit Trolls full feature film sequel will hopefully be better again. Please make it so. Final side-note to this one here: Director Joel Crawford will be the man in charge of the upcoming Croods sequel.