#60 - A Troll in Central Park

Now that lights are turned on for a new theatre on the shores of Green Bay in Wisconsin, and now that my mosquito bites have begun to stop itching, and now that I have a decent internet connection that I dont have to be in a lobby of a Best Western to use, I can get back to writing reviews of crappy movies. I know you have been waiting, anticipating, and damn near beside yourself for this review. I know you are thinking that Rock a Doodle was such a bad movie that there is no way that Don Bluth could make anything worse. Well my friends, he made something worse. That something is A Troll in Central Park.

I know I have said this before, but I will say it again, it's hard to know where to begin. First of all, the premise of the movie is that in a land filled with ugly, nasty trolls, there is one troll that looks like a cross between a leprechon and Dopey. Where the evil nasty queen troll has a purple thumb that creates nasty stuff, this little tub of goo has a green thumb that has the power to create plant life, but most importantly, beautiful flowers. Kill me already. Please, kill me already. The queen troll hates flowers cause they are pretty and so she banishes him to a nasty place, the nastiest place of them all, New York City. Apparently, this mythical troll community is in the general vicinity of EUROPE and this fat little troll basically immigrated to Central Park. Which he loves at first, but then hates cause its scary and cries himself to sleep in a trememndous cavern that he finds in a crack under a footbridge. THATS RIGHT!!! A tremendous cavern that is under the hills, trees, and lawns of Central Park and is only accesible from a little crack under a footbridge!! Are you freaking kidding me? I know its a cartoon, but its set in a real place. How about a little bit of reality to that world. I know its asking too much of a cartoon with a troll in it, but if you take something from a fantasy world and put it into a real location, try to make that location realistic, unless the fantasy characters change it. Oh, and they change it. This little fatty takes him green thumb and makes this cavern into a lush garden of beautiful flowers and whatnot. It sickening really. The whole love of beatiful flowers was really quite nauseating. What was even more nauseating was the musical number that went along with the flowering of the cavern. As well as the musical number that went along with his proffession of love for flowers that is sung to the girl that stumbles into the cavern. Here is what I don't understand, in Rock a Doodle you have Glen Campbell playing a singing rooster and you cover up his songs with crappy action sequences, yet in this movie you let Dom Deluise, of all people, sing his freaking heart out about the loveliness of flowers. There was no covering up of the songs, just a bunch of pretty flowers blooming all over in a pretty little garden of cavern buried under Central Park and only accessible from a crack under a footbridge. Oh, and the crap about the dreams coming true really gets annoying when a toy boat gets turned into a huge vessel that floats through the air in a huge fantasy sequence that all takes place in a cavern...blah...blah...blah. And of course the queen troll comes to Central Park, tears the place apart into a wasteland which is explained by an amazing tornado and the kids have a happy ending. The cuteness level of this cartoon is vomitous. The cliches of the angry kid, having dreams, and that pretty and nice things win over ugly and mean things is so badly iverdon in this thing that I wonder how these people sleep at night. It's ridiculous. It's bad. It's overdone. It's ill conceived. It's not entertaining. It's poorly written. It has annoyingly sappy songs. The villains are annoying and over the top. The main character is way too sweet and happy to even be remotely palatable. The big sequences are disgustingly fantastical and unrealistic in what is suppossed to be a realistic world. I mean it when I say that no words I put down here can do justice to how bad of a cartoon this was. Hideuosly repulsive. A waste of time for everyone involved. I'd rather vote to make sure that my favorite Big Brother All Star makes it back into the house this summer. I'd rather watch Matt Lauer interview Brittney Spears and mistake it for legitimate journalism. I'd rather watch Jay Leno ask Trace Adkins to elaborate on what he was going for with Honky Tonk Badonkadonk as if there was some sort of hidden meeting or social commentary we may not have been able to pick up on without an explanation...oh wait...I did happen to see that. This review is over.