Gnomes (film)

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Gnomes
Directed by	Jack Zander
Written by	Wil Huygen Rien Poortvliet
Release date(s)	1980
Running time	45 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

Gnomes is an american 1980 animated film, based on the book with the same title by the dutch Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet. The movie was nominated to an Emmy in 1981 for Outstanding Animated Program.

[edit] Plot

This charming made for tv movie is all about a family of forest gnomes who live together in their home under a tree. The family consists of a father, mother, grandfather, older son Tor, and a set of young twins. The movie mainly concerns itself with Tor, his upcoming marriage to his fiancee Lisa, and his family's preparations for the wedding. The gnome family busies itself with decorating and preparing for the festivities, meanwhile a family of trolls--as grotesque as the gnomes are appealing--plan on ruining the wedding for the gnomes. The troll family consists of a bossy mother troll who's fond of wearing a snake in her hair, her two bumbling older sons, and a young troll affectionately called "Runt".

Adding to the wedding mishaps is Tor's uncle Kostya who came all the way from Siberia to crash the wedding ceremony, he makes mischief by adding extra alcohol to Grandpa's special punch, and making some inappropriate advances to the mother of the bride.

The movie also contains a handful of vignettes which use still illustrations from the original book and narration to explain some of the facts about the different sorts of gnomes, and what sorts of duties gnomes perform to help the creatures they live amongst.

It was once common to see this film played on cable television movie channels, however it has since become very hard to find as it is not readily available for sale on DVD or VHS. However it was quite popular in Sweden where it has a fairly large fan base.

Several years after this film was released, the television series, The World of David the Gnome was created, which was also based on the same novel.