LOL Surprise: The Movie Parent Guide

Ava (Ayla Rae Neal) is unhappy. The young girl is packing up her room, preparing for an unwanted move. As Ava talks to her LOL Surprise dolls, light glints through a pair of 3-D glasses, painting the room with a wash of color. The curious girl puts on the glasses, only to be whisked off to a poorly rendered digital world where her dolls come to exciting life.

In this new reality Ava is a baby LOL doll named Queen Bee, little sister to a Beyoncé imitator, Royal Bee (voiced by Paris Anderson), who is filming a movie. The dolls are obviously novices at filmmaking since they are filming four endings and will decide on their favorite prior to the movie’s premiere that evening. Clearly post-production isn’t really a thing in this plastic universe. As Ava/Queen Bee helps her older sister complete the film, she learns to be brave and embrace change, neatly tying up Ava’s real world problems in a shiny, gold bow.

Sigh. LOL Surprise: The Movie does exactly what it sets out to do – advertise the dolls around which the film is built. There are no surprises here for any adult unfortunate enough to watch it but there are some real stinkers in terms of messaging for kids. The overt lessons about courage and resilience are fine, but it’s the implicit themes that are disturbing. As one character raps, “They beat the bad and saved the city, Doing it all while looking so pretty.” Prettiness is the key feature of all characters in the movie – one of whom is badgered into undergoing a makeover she doesn’t want or need. Prettiness is all there is because heaven knows, none of them are smart. They blunder about, cluelessly making a movie with no defined script and a ludicrous timeline. The overwhelming message this film lobs at the little kids who will watch it is that girl power comes from three things: clothes, cosmetics, and celebrity. Competence, education, skill, grit, struggle, resilience – none of these even score a nod in the script.

The eye-rolling messages in this movie mean that parents are going to have to watch it with their youngsters. We know that it’s best to consume media with our kids, but we also know that sometimes we desperately need to plunk our kids in front of something safe on the TV while we unwind or get work done. LOL Surprise: The Movie should not be watched by unaccompanied kids because they will not be able to challenge the messaging that is being force-fed to them. Parents, there is no win for you in this film. The stop-motion animation quality is poor, the script is lazy, and the messages are appalling. The only plus here is that the movie’s incredibly short. It’s only 47 minutes long – but it feels much, much longer.