Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Sorry, this movie sucks

Fantastic!

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

In the starry sky of the history of animation, Don Bluth stars as one of the greatest directors to ever grace with his works. He achieved the record for the highest-grossing animated film outside Disney not once, but three times (An American Tail, The Land Before Time, Anastasia).It is said that Don Bluth was the sole major factor that turned Disney to re-organize their strategies, make "The Little Mermaid", and ultimately lead to the Renaissance Age Of Animation.But sadly, now that Disney was awaken again, Don Bluth was overwhelmed with the competition against them. The issue is complex and I will explain it in my upcoming review of "The Pebble And The Penguin", which was the following Don Bluth film.Now, I will talk about "A Troll In Central Park".Well the technical features are high-quality, one of the things that Don Bluth kept in all his filmography no matter if his films were bad. The film has a colorful, contrasting, lavish animation, one of the things Don Bluth never compromised. It even has that style of the '30s-'40s (Snow White, Pinocchio, etc. ) feature films and short cartoons in the gestures and mannerisms of characters. Rotoscoping, employed in the children's parents, is also a nice thing to watch.The music also saves what otherwise would be a forgettable film. "Gnorga The Queen Of Mean" surprises the public with the sudden modernity of a Pop rock tune like those of the '80s and '90s (why is it that most of the times, the villains have the best songs in a film?). "Absolutely Green" is a poignant song of the kind that makes your eyes watery, complete with a children choir. The fact that is played in two powerful, nicely executed moments in the films surely will make, at least, the youngest of the children cry. Also the background music, just like the animation, is employed here just like Dumbo and other films of the early Disney era.Now, it is when you start analyzing the human features that the film starts showing its lacks... Tiger and Fievel had an excellent chemistry going on in "An American Tail"... but it's hard to tell why the same voice actors (playing Stanley and Gus, respectively) didn't work as well here. Gnorga has the absolutely best performance of all the film, with an outstanding job of Cloris Leachman in a rather weird role, who clearly enjoys being so hammy and troll-like. Llort is the other performance that passes the exam, although Gnorga wins all the awards by far. As an Argentine I tried to find the dub for this film, but it was never screened in Latin America so only the Spanish dub from Spain was made. I watched the Spanish dub and then the original English. I liked the original one for the voices of Stanley, the kids and their parents, but the Spanish dub is way better for the voices of Gnorga and Llort. Wow, even the Gnorga's song is upgraded from their pretty simple original lyrics and adds way more vocabulary and intricate things!Now, about the story... well, it's hard to call this a "story". And mind you, I'm a Don Bluth fan but even I admit this film failures. The film has many scenes and passages that seem shallow and simply don't go nowhere, plot-wise, such as Gus and Rosie playing in the park with balloons, boats or butterflies. The musical number of the flowers to cheer Rosie, in another passage, also qualifies. All these scenes make the film seem more like an "anecdote" of the children stroll in the park, but then again, this method can still be done well. Miyazaki proved in "My Neighbor Totoro" that you don't have to have a plot-driven, rather "Western-style" kind of storytelling, but also you can go in another way, with a rather "anecdote" or "trip" kind of story. But you don't see in "A Troll In Central Park" the gracefulness in which Miyazaki could present those kind of stories.The film also seems to lack more soul, "Rock-a-Doodle" and "Thumbelina" are also among the failures of Don Bluth, but it was their loads and loads of characters that helped to give more substance and charm to the films. Here you have too few characters, in a film with many claustrophobic sceneries (a dark kingdom, an underground cave, barren lands...)And when all is said and done, you have to look up to the info and find that this film budget was of $23.5 million, but only made $71,368... no words. This was one of the lowest grossing films of all time, one of the most notable box-office bombs (though not the greatest bomb of Don Bluth)So, even with the animation, the music, and Gnorga to redeem the film and lift the rating, this is such a poorly executed, so underwhelming film, with so many fails and lacks, and such a failure for costing $23.5 million and only making 71 thousand dollars, that I will rate it 3/10. The reason I'm not rating this 1/10 is because of the aforementioned lifting factors.But luckily, even if this is the worst Don Bluth film, both critically and financially, "A Troll In Central Park" will never be among the 10 worst animated films of all time, not even among the 20 worst ever... for Don Bluth, even in the misery and the mediocrity, still had his signature charm and willpower that made him one day leave Disney, and start an animation studio of his own.

Overall, I don't think this is Don Bluth's worst film, but it's just an unfocused mess in the animation industry. The story has some motivational lessons at first, but the first forty minutes had little to do with it until the climax, the characters are completely uninteresting especially the villain who came across as generic, there are some cutesy filler that got on my nerves, and despite it's beautiful music score, the songs themselves are really forgettable. Granted, the animation is beautiful with lots of nice backgrounds and good character designs and the voice acting is excellent, but those two flaws are outweighed by the flaws that I've already stated.I've seen Bluth's better films, but this one, although not the worst, is a terrible movie. Unless you have kids who would like to watch something nowadays, fans of Bluth would most likely to avoid this at all costs.

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".

My grandmother bought me this movie many many years ago (I still have it on VHS) and I loved this movie then. The cute plot line and message that you can do anything and be yourself makes it a cute movie for young kids. Compared to some of the movies available out there now, I would definitely show this to my children. There is singing, dancing flowers, and a cute troll to boot!No, it is not the most sophisticated film, but still a cute one! My only caution is that Gnorga, the Queen, may frighten some children, especially when she is fighting to with Stanley to take the children. Overall, this movie still has a special place in my heart from when I was young.