A Troll in Central Park

1994 "Believe in Yourself and You Can Do Anything!"
5.3| 1h16m| G| en| More Info
Released: 07 October 1994 Released
Producted By: Sullivan Bluth Studios
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

A friendly troll with a magic green thumb grows one flower too many for the queen, whose laws require all trolls to be mean ugly and scare humans whenever possible. As a punishment, he is exiled to a world of concrete, where he should live a life of proper trolldom: Manhattan.

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Reviews

Mjeteconer Just perfect...
Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews
Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Jesper Brun I have heard from many fans of Don Bluth that this is his worst film. Yes it is bad, but not absolutely garbage in my opinion. As a Don Bluth film it is among his weakest, because he goes against his own philosophy of making bleak movies where he did not hide sad or brutal sides of things, but challenged kids' patience and intelligence and then rewarded that with a happy ending. This does not have that. Our main character, Stanley, is a prime example of that. He is banished from the kingdom of trolls to Central Park in New York for being too nice and wanting to grow flowers by the evil troll queen Gnorga. He is constantly smiling and flipping his ears in sugary joy and that is banned in the troll kingdom. He then encounters two generic kids who have sneaked out to the park to have some fun. The time with the kids and Stanley is a lot of cutesy filler which will make Bluth fans vomit. I was close to, but through out the movie the rather nice animation and the fine character designs were kind of redeemable. I actually liked the climax and the period after, but personally i thought it was ruined by a sickly sweet ending. To sum up. I see why fans of Bluth hate this movie, but even though I don't like it, I would slightly prefer it over Thumbelina and Rock-A-Doodle due to its nice animation and character designs.
anthony-rigoni That is exactly what this movie is about: pointless randomness!!! If there is somebody who mixed together random ideas with a blender, that is exactly how this movie got made. There's this one troll who sang "I'm a bad troll" to the tune to "Eh, Uchnem" from "the Volga Boatmen". Was that even suppose to be a song? Yeah, compared that freaking song to the god-awful musical numbers from "Tom and Jerry the Movie"! And speaking of god-awful musical numbers, none of the songs were original or creative. What have you done, Don Bluth? What have you done?! You were the guy who created timeless masterpieces such as Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and the Small One and then you have to make this random piece of crap. And take a good look at the main character, Stanley. That pea-brained pussy is the worst protagonist I have ever seen. And one scene even rips-off the classic light-saber fight between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader from "Star Wars V"(Except the fact that Stanley doesn't get his hand chopped off). If you want a movie filled with pointless randomness, this movie is the one for you. However, if you don't like pointless randomness, avoid this moronic nightmare at all costs.
joebrian55 I am currently scouring numerous kids' movies I've seen and determining whether they're good or bad for children, much less YOU.This one... it's going to take a little more thinking before I decide. I borrowed this movie from a library because I am a Don Bluth fan and I have been hearing about the negative reception and obscurity it's got. Like many children of the 1990's, I grew up with awesome animated movies for children, such as The Lion King, The Land Before Time, Aladdin etc.So we have a friendly troll named Stanley who lives in a land where trolls are mean and scary (think The BFG), and it is ruled by none other than a no-nonsense evil queen who believes bad is good and good is bad (Geesh, that sounds hard to say).So the message in this movie is "If you believe in yourself and dream well enough, things will magically happen." which I really am struggling to look at without upsetting fans of this movie. At first, it sounds real, but if you think critically at it, you'll realize "No, that doesn't make sense!" As the Nostalgia Critic explained, "dreams don't happen by just dreaming, you make it happen!", which is actually true. Although that's probably the context Don Bluth was aiming for, it just sounds different than what was probably intended. I agree that only certain "dreams" can come true if you work hard to make it happen, but that strongly depends on what it is, like you can't just dream to become Sailor Moon, work hard for it and TA-DAH, wish granted.But I give this a 7 rating because I don't find it as bad as many make it out to be, I realize many people on the internet saw it as kids and liked it since then. In fact, the animation is good, the voice acting is not bad, I did mention in one of my other reviews that one of my favourite actors is/was Dom DeLuise, and of course Cloris Leachman as the evil queen Gnorga, whose name I recognize from Castle in the Sky.But the story seems a little rushed, some moments are drawn out and the story was just a little bit too simple for me, but it's aimed at kids so I'm not irked over that. However, I feel these faults and all the negative reception must have been blamed one thing: Warner Bros.Considering the studio was totally pessimistic about marketing this movie, even deliberately limiting the movie's release and advertising, I'm sure they were plotting to make this film as bad as humanly possible, even rushing Don Bluth to finish the movie for fall of 1994.If that's true, then I feel sorry for anyone who likes Don Bluth and are annoyed by this film. It's not Toy Story, but I still like it. So, if you want to show it to your kids, then I think it would be a good idea to talk with them afterwards and explain to them the true meaning of "believing in dreams".
TheLittleSongbird I don't think that Troll in Central Park is as bad as people make it out to be, as a matter of fact it's very sweet, but anyone who loved Secret of Nimh and Land Before Time like I did, will be disappointed. The animation on the most part was quite flat, with the exception of some nice animation in the musical numbers and the effects, and there were some lifeless backgrounds in the scarier bits. The incidental music is lovely, but I didn't care that much for the songs. They're not excrement, but they are certainly not Oscar-worthy. This was disappointing, as Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann have done some lovely songs for American Tail and Muppet Treasure Island, but the songs they did here didn't feel the same. The script wasn't bad, but there were times where it could have been more imaginative. The characters were likable but not particularly memorable. Stanley is very sweet, with his wiggling ears, and the late Dom DeLuise voiced him earnestly, and there is some very nice singing. Gnorga is rather frightening, but Cloris Leachman was brilliant in an almost unrecognisable voice over. Phillip Glasser was good, but he and DeLuise lacked the chemistry they had in American Tail. Rosie was really sweet and Charles Nelson Reilly and the singing and dancing flowers provided the humour,(even if it reminded me strongly of the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees) that was much needed, in a rather lacklustre plot. All in all, one of the weaker Don Bluth films is redeemed by a very good voice cast, and some nice music. 6/10 Bethany Cox