A Troll in Central Park

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A Troll in Central Park is an animated movie directed By Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. It was released on October 7, 1994 by Warner Bros. Pictures.

The film features the voice talents of Dom DeLuise as Stanley, Phillip Glasser as Gus, Tawny Sunshine Glover as Rosie, Cloris Leachman as Queen Gnorga, Hayley Mills as Hilary, Jonathan Pryce as Alan and Charles Nelson Reilly as King Llort.

1 Plot
2 Reception
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Stanley is a kindhearted, noncomforting troll with a magic green thumb that can create flowers with a mere touch. In the Kingdom of Trolls, all beauty is strictly forbidden and trolls are required to be mean and ugly and to scare humans whenever possible. As a result, Stanley hides all the flowers he finds or grows from the other trolls.

When Gnorga, the Queen of Trolls, discovers Stanley's secret, Llort, the King of Trolls, convinces her to banish him to Manhattan in New York, U.S.A. to live a life proper for a troll, rather than turning him to stone. Stanley lands in Central Park, and proceeds to hide himself away in a cave under a bridge from the outside world.

In an apartment, a boy named Gus was getting ready to have some fun with Alan (his dad) at Central Park, but he tells his son that he has a trial he's preparing for in a court (knowing that Alan might be a lawyer), much to Gus's anger. Gus, then asks his mom, Hilary, to take him, but she tells him that she's going to a open house on Park Avenue today. Both Alan and Hilary said goodbye and leave Gus and her baby sister Rosie with their nanny, Maria. Eventually, Gus tricked Maria by forbiding her to go to their bedroom, so that he quietly leaves the apartment, and taking Rosie with him to Central Park.

While playing with Gus's toy boat, the kids accidentally find Stanley hidden in the cave under the bridge in Central Park, and he befriends them; eventually carrying them in a dreamboat through the utopia he created under the bridge and hoping to perfect it. After Gnorga discovers he is in Central Park surrounded by beauty and happiness, she and Llort follow him there to make sure her punishment is carried out properly. They travel inside a tornado that Gnorga creates, in which trashes up Central Park. Once the kids are heading home, she kidnaps Rosie. Gus comes back to the utopia, that is now ruined, for Stanley's help, but Stanley is too scared. Gus angrily tells Stanley that he will never have a dream come true if he's too scared to fight for what he believes in, just before he leaves, along with several talking flowers and animals who decided to face Gnorga.

They manage to find and and distract her to save Rosie, but she and Llort trap them. At that rate, Gnorga turns Gus in to a troll. The flowers and animals surrounded Gnorga, messing with her, while Llort takes Rosie until Gus turns his feet into stone, freeing Rosie. She runs and accidently falls into a gorge, much to Gus's dismay. Luckily, Stanley, who uses Gus's boat again for a flying boat, saves her. Although he is still afraid to face Gnorga (who evades the flowers and animals), Stanley decided to face her through his dreams and power, and angrily engages her in a contest of wills, wherein Gnorga is changed into a rosebush and sent home unhappy, along with Llort. But before her transformation, Gnorga uses her magic to force Gus(who is still a troll) to change Stanley into a stone figure of himself, only to be swept away by the undoing of her own spells (including the one she casted on Gus, turning him back to a human). As a statue for now, Stanley managed to take the kids back to their apartment, just in time before Alan and Hilary came home.

While authorities and officials try to find out about the cause of the tornado that destroyed Central Park, Gus and Rosie, heartbroken, find Stanley in a trash can(in which he landed) and returned him to the destroyed park and leave his forlorn image on a tree-stump, Gus' right thumb momentarily glows green, and he uses it to revive Stanley. Restored to life, the troll brings Central Park back to life, and covers New York City with his new garden as his new utopia.

[edit] Reception

Once released, it turns out to be a critical and financial failure. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an average rating of 3.1/10, counting only five reviews that are all negative, denouncing of its meaningless entertainment. It flopped at the box-office, only grossing $71,368 domestically, making it Don Bluth's most unsuccessful film to date. It was probably due to the distributor's lack of promotion; there was no television promotion, no advance screenings, and only a low-key print campaign. Despite the failure, it became a minor cult classic, especially for several families.

[edit] Trivia

The film was referenced in an infamous Saturday Night Live sketch with Alec Baldwin as Charles Nelson Reilly being interviewed by James Lipton (Will Ferrell) on Inside the Actors Studio.
Twentieth Century Fox bought the rights to A Troll in Central Park, and is now the film's distributor.