“Troll 2,” a sequel to the crowd-pleasing 2022 Norwegian giant creature feature, doesn’t have nearly enough action, monster-related or otherwise, to justify its existence. Like its predecessor, “Troll 2” does a fine enough job of replicating the inclusive, family-friendly action-adventure template that Steven Spielberg and his associates at Amblin Entertainment helped to turn into a formula for general audience spectaculars.
Unlike its predecessor, “Troll 2” doesn’t have enough canned dramatic or comedic incidents to make it seem particularly eventful. This sequel sends the now discredited troll expert Nora Tidemann (Ine Marie Wilmann) and a crack team of government functionaries after a giant marauding troll and his estranged troll son. They fight, but not nearly enough to draw viewers into the movie’s polished, but skimpy creature effects scenes. The human drama isn’t more compelling either, though it’s never so tedious that you can’t imagine it improving as it develops.
Unfortunately, to enjoy “Troll 2” you have to enjoy spending time with Nora and her colleagues. These types of characters can admittedly be fun to hang around, and the ensemble cast does a good enough job of embodying certain movie-friendly types. What really trips up this amiably cheesy B-movie is its uniformly generic dialogue, which makes it hard to care about stock types who, despite their superficial differences, all essentially sound alike. That’s more noticeable than you might think in a movie where Nora’s brought back one more time to help the Norwegian government’s ongoing experiments on the magical troll Jotun, or “Megatroll,” as Nora’s primary government contact Andreas (Kim Falck) calls him.
Andreas is one of two foils for Nora, whose pragmatic, but sympathetic interest in Jotun sets her apart. Andreas is also a big nerd who trades cloying pop culture references with his pregnant and mostly helpless wife Sigrid (Karoline Viktoria Sletteng Garvang), including a groan-worthy shout-out to “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” Andreas and his flights of naïve fancy are negligibly reined in by his all-business colleague, project supervisor Marion (Sara Khorami), who initially dismisses Nora for being too credulous. Marion’s attitude almost immediately softens though once military Captain Kris (Mads Sjøgård Pettersen) starts to aggressively flirt with her. No sparks fly and no real conflicts ensue though since nobody seems that invested in their roles’ stock behavior.
In short, everybody’s too nice for this type of sequel, which ostensibly enhances the previous movie’s premise by adding negligibly personal stakes. There’s Andreas and Siggy’s baby, which rarely comes up, and also an almost instantly abandoned conflict between Marion’s skepticism, and Nora’s long-held belief that trolls aren’t just monstruous threats to be dealt with. Nora also claims to be reflecting on unresolved issues with her father, who not only inspired her childhood fascination with trolls, but also set a largely unremarked upon example for Andreas, who dedicates a book to Nora’s dad.
Even the trolls have baggage to unpack, and this time it’s a score to settle with Saint Olaf, a revered Norwegian king whose legacy of banishing trolls is threatened by Jotun’s latest rampage. Jotun also has a son, so of course they have to fight for contrived reasons. Also, Kris has his own semi-personal connection, but it’s so contrived that any further elaboration would ruin the already meagre element of surprise.
Many of these character-defining conflicts don’t go far enough since, for the most, everybody cooperates well enough, and even pressure from the Norwegian president doesn’t add much pressure to Nora and the gang’s quest to understand what’s wrong with Jotun. Almost every character speaks with the same unqualified naivete, too, and most of them lapse seamlessly into genre movie cliches, with an occasional wink to viewers. A lack of focus and conceptual timidity also largely defines the movie’s troll-centric scenes, which mostly promise more than they actually deliver.
The best parts of “Troll 2” unsurprisingly reduce its characters, big and small, to anonymous cyphers on the trail of a buried and largely undeveloped history that reconnects King Olaf with Jotun and his ancestors. Some Indiana Jones-esque, connect-the-dots puzzle-solving keep the plot moving, though the movie seems conceptually tapped out by the time the characters arrive in Trondheim, Norway’s former capital and the home of the tourist-friendly Nidaros Chapel. It seems that Jotun’s re-activation reflects an inconvenient truth about Norway and its national heroes, though the filmmakers don’t devote much time to that theme.
So much time’s spent on re-establishing the protagonists’ familiar and likable nature that the movie’s one unique hook sometimes feels like an afterthought. Jotun still looks great, and his son doesn’t look half bad either, but all they get to do is run around, make light mischief, and vaguely suggest that things could become more catastrophic if they aren’t stopped. Maybe next time.
