BRIAN VINER: Timberlake’s precision-tooled Trolls return in all their lurid glory

Trolls Band Together (U, 91 mins)

Rating:

The Pigeon Tunnel (12A, 92 mins)

Rating:

The DreamWorks animation Trolls Band Together does not offer much of a treat for parents lugging their little darlings to it over the half-term holiday. It’s the third instalment in the Trolls franchise, another loud, daft adventure for those odd little creatures with shaving-brush hair.

This time, the trolls must re-form their boy-band act, BroZone, because only ‘perfect family harmony’ will free one of their brothers from the cruel clutches of a rival act, Velvet (voiced by Amy Schumer) and Veneer (Andrew Rannells).

Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick again voice the main protagonists Branch and Queen Poppy, and there are a few half-decent gags in a film that somehow feels like it’s rolled off a production line, precision-tooled to amuse grown-ups as well as children. I really enjoyed the last film in the series, 2020’s Trolls World Tour. This one, however, is a 90-minute assault on the senses that has its moments, but lacks heart.

The trolls must re-form their boy-band act, BroZone, because only ‘perfect family harmony’ will free one of their brothers from the cruel clutches of a rival act, Velvet (voiced by Amy Schumer) and Veneer (Andrew Rannells).

Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick again voice the main protagonists Branch and Queen Poppy

The Pigeon Tunnel might seem like a curious name to give a documentary until you hear the film’s subject, John le Carre, explaining that just about all his novels, at one time or other, had The Pigeon Tunnel as a working title.

It refers to something he saw in his mid-teens that haunted him for the rest of his long life (he died three years ago, aged 89). His father Ronnie, a feckless conman who did jail time for fraud, took him to Monte Carlo, where pigeons were reared on the roof of the casino, purely so they could be sent through long tunnels from which they would emerge into the bright Mediterranean sunlight. ‘Well-lunched sporting gentlemen’ would then shoot them out of the sky.

American documentary-maker Errol Morris’s long interviews with Le Carre form the backbone of this fascinating film, concentrating on the great man’s bizarre childhood and how it influenced his subsequent career as an Eton schoolmaster, spy for both MI5 and MI6, and best-selling novelist.

Throughout it all, you marvel at le Carre’s wisdom and eloquence. Available in some cinemas and on Apple TV+, it’s a real treat.

The Pigeon Tunnel is a real treat, allowing you to marvel at John le Carre’s wisdom and eloquence

Source: Read Full Article