Gnomes and Trolls: The Secret Chamber (2008)

Sadly Over-hyped

Excellent, a Must See

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It actually pains me to say that about 'Gnomes & Trolls: The Secret Chamber', as it does with any animated film or show that is considered mediocre or less by me. Am a big fan of animation and foreign/international animation fascinates me (particularly Russian and Japanese anime), but when eventually viewing it online it just didn't do anything for me.'Gnomes & Trolls: The Secret Chamber' sounded like it could have been a decent film at least if done right, but the execution was severely lacking in almost every area. While nowhere near among the worst animations ever made it is down with the most bizarre and messiest. Not being a prude, or at least not intending to be, am a child at heart despite being a young adult who judges every film taking target audience, the film's aim and what it is meant to be into account.The best thing about 'Gnomes & Trolls: The Secret Chamber' is the father/son relationship, that was the one element that had any heart or humanity and was beautifully and tenderly done.Some of the backgrounds have some nice detail and Peter Stormare has fun with his character. There is the odd bit of sporadic amusing humour but it's never hilarious.However, the animation is mostly not good at all. The backgrounds have moments, while others were simplistic and unfocused, but the colours are flat and murky and even worse the character designs are stiff and look ugly, almost unintentionally creepy.Particularly bad too was the storytelling, working only in the father/son relationship. The rest of it is very messy and muddled, almost borderline confusing with many things coming over as vague which gives it an overly hectic and sprawling all over the place vibe. It started off slow then got rushed and weird. The dialogue often sounds awkward and while love, friendship and family values are very important they have been executed with far more subtlety elsewhere than the patronising way 'Gnomes & Trolls: The Secret Chamber' did.None of the characters did anything for me, they were either bland, annoying, bizarre or pointless. You'd be hard pressed to find a weirder character of any animated film in the past decade than that hedgehog. Of the voice acting, Stormare is the only one who actually fits his character and sounds like he's making an effort. Talented prolific voice actress EG Daily is wasted.In summary, bizarre and messy but not without its redeeming merits. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Was easier to watch the second time. A lot of the action and scenery looked similar so you had to listen hard to the script to get a lot of the jokes and understand what was happening. Even after the second time (though I wasn't watching as closely as the kids) it was hard to know the names.Visuals exciting if a little messy, but lots of things unexplained or not explained clearly- a little more back info on the characters would have given them more depth. Why are the gnomes and trolls in the forest and why do they fight each other? Bipolar hedgehog, very bizarre character- why is he like this? And as a previous review said, the boy lying and taking something from his father should have been addressed and apologised for by the boy somewhere in the 'moral of the story'.We hired this movie (hence watching it 2-3 times) but would not intentionally choose to hire it again, may be interesting to see if the 'Forest Trial' movie (2010) is a good follow-on though.

The kid is defiant and irresponsible. Pretty much all the main characters do awful things to each other, with a warped sense of right and wrong.The only character that is somewhat normal is the mother gnome.Also, there is a bipolar hedgehog who is pretty amusing.But basically, you have the kid who steals stuff from his dad, parents who snoop on the kid, and a troll who kills his father and laughs it off.Then, the moral of the story is that technology is good and will solve all problems.Would not recommend for children.

If you are used to American cinema then this film will probably seem a bit off to you as it appears to be a Swedish product.Great effort in character development which is sadly offset by the weak plot line. The film did a poor job keeping my kids interested and, frankly, seemed superfluous to them. Some entertaining moments for adults willing to pay attention which is a charming trait it shares with Disney but there is not enough of it. I would not go out of my way to watch this movie and I would not recommend it particularly. In the event you are torn between watching this and another movie that is also not particularly good you won't be completely disappointed.