Early one morning, Tommy woke up to find Angel holding a package in his paws. On top of it there was a letter from Annika, reading the following:
"Dear Tommy,
I have a few wonderful movies for you to watch this weekend! I hope you enjoy them.
Yours truly,
Annika"
"I hope she didn't send me Inchon," said Tommy nervously as she opened the package; but she was relieved to find that there was no Korean War movie inside. Instead she saw several Disney wannabe movies. "Okay, there's Anastasia… The Pebble and the Penguin… Rock-a-Doodle (I'm sensing a pattern here)… Thumbelina… Titan A.E.… No, no, no! Not that one! She tricked me again! ATROLLINCENTRALPARK! Curse you and your filthy tricks, Annika!"
Before she started the movie, she turned on her computer and said, "Hi, I'm Tommy, and today I'll be doing my first movie review. After he went bankrupt with Rock-a-Doodle and did everything wrong with Thumbelina where everything went right with The Little Mermaid, Don Bluth, along with his two main partners in crime, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, devised something more original, resulting in A Troll in Central Park, often considered the worst film he ever made. Now it's time I reviewed the Razzie-worthy abomination of annoyance that is… A Troll in Central Park."
With this Tommy started the movie. After the credits gave way to gloomy scenes, she was almost mortified. "Is this… C-Central Park?" she muttered. "No, too gruesome. Maybe there's a whole mess of trolls here. Is that… our hero? He looks more like Dopey got as fat as Smee and then stole Eeyore's tail. Where are we anyway? The Kingdom of the Trolls? And what is his name? It says 'Stanley' on the DVD, so… I'll call him Stanley, I guess. He has a green thumb? Why? Oh, he creates flowers with it! How beautiful!"
("Say, what was that?" [Stupid laughter])
"I laugh uncontrollably because I'll be slapped with a lawsuit by Disney," chuckled Tommy as she mocked the troll guard.
("For a minute, I thought I saw one of them… flower things!")
"You did!" yelled Tommy in an awful Tweety voice. "You did taw one of them… flower things!"
("That's a relief! I'd sure hate to have to tell the Queen!")
"Well, you SHOULD!" she replied.
("Oh, well, have a rotten day. ?I'm a bad troll/A very bad troll?")
"Alright," sighed Tommy. "So while our writers came up with a childish screenplay, Stanley heads back home to his tree and he sees his illegal garden."
("You know, Violet, what this garden needs is a big rosy-posy. Right there. And I'm just the sweet William – I mean Stanley – to do it.")
"Is that… Dom DeLuise?" asked Tommy. "Seriously, Pizza the Hutt, the funniest villain in a Mel Brooks movie, is this dumb character? I hope he gets punished for his illegal activity."
("You did this? Right under the queen's nose? Ooh! I hate flowers! And for your crime, you are going before the number one flower hater in the land… GNORGA!")
"That's a weird name," said Tommy, "but then again Rainbow Dash and Annika sound weird as well. 'Gnorga' sounds more like a bad sneeze followed by a bad hiccup. And who played her anyway? Cloris Leachman? You mean Frau Blücher…" She whinnied. "…she played this menace who makes Phyllis Diller look like Barbara Eden and sings songs that make Alan Menken sound like Igor Stravinsky? And then there's Llort, who is voiced by Charles Nelson Reilly, one of the most awesome Match Game panelists ever? What will happen to Stanley?"
("Stone him!")
Serious Tommy was serious. "I have a better vocabulary than that," she said. "I hope they don't petrify him."
("I know a place, rock and steel, nothing grows. Creatures more troll-like than we are. It will be worse than stone. It will be slow. It will be painful. Think what they'll say about you in the newspapers. Why, it's a shoo-in for the tabloids."
"DONE!")
"So the giant clay Wonder Ball that Stanley gets trapped in goes all the way to… Central Park?" asked Tommy. "How do you know this is the place of rock and steel? Plants are everywhere! Trees, shrubs, bushes… and I believe I failed to mention flowers, didn't I? So upon his arrival, Stanley meets Charlie Barkin from All Dogs Go to Heaven."
("Oh, hello!")
"And then," she continued, "Stanley goes through nearly three minutes of a chase scene before he ends up under a bridge; but instead of meeting the three billy goats Gruff, he creates a bed of what I assume to be grass.
"Next we go to a house in the city, where we meet a family consisting of a boy named Gus (Phillip Glasser); his baby sister Rosie (Tawny Sunshine Glover); and their parents, Alan (Jonathan Pryce) and Hilary (Hayley Mills). At least they didn't reunite Adrian Hall and Heather Ripley, and even if they got Larry Hagman and Carol Burnett, they'd be better as 'New Yorkers' than our two parents are as 'Americans,' but I digress. Gus wants his father to go with him to Central Park, but he gets a firm negative."
("You know I have an important case to prepare for. The park will have to come later."
"It always has to be later! Why can't we ever do what I wanna do?")
"So Gus asks his mother the same question, and he gets the same answer."
("Your father works very hard to make our life nice, children. You have to learn to appreciate that."
"Mom, will you take us to float my boat?"
"Oh, Gus. I have an open house on Park Avenue today.")
"Anyway, while the parents are out, Gus puts a sign on his door to keep the housekeeper, Maria, out of his room, and Rosie agrees to go with him to Central Park. In fact they sneak so quietly past Maria that she doesn't know that they've gone down to Central Park – with no adult supervision whatsoever. As a result, they get into all kinds of trouble here and there while we hear some nice dialogue from Rosie."
("Boat." "Bug!" "Butterfly!" "Flower." "Hi!" "Rosie." "Troll.")
"Nice job, girl. I only wish your vocabulary could be more extensive. So Rosie wanders off and eventually meets Stanley," Tommy added, "and thus we get more filler. This is the guy who directed An American Tail – and yes, Gus is indeed the same voice as Fievel – and he's brought us this dumb nonsense?"
(Rosie kisses Stanley… "OOH-WHEE-HEE-HEE-HEE!")
"I would not react like this to a young filly kissing me," said Tommy, "especially in a place like Central Park." She experimented on Angel, who did absolutely nothing. "So anyway, Stanley loves the name 'Rosie' and he breaks into his song, 'Absolutely Green.' Eventually, Gus stumbles upon Stanley, mainly because he's been looking for the past five minutes for Rosie."
("I'm a troll."
"And he's a GOOD troll!")
"He wants to take Rosie away, and naturally she starts crying. For some reason, this gets Gnorga's attention, and while that's going on the flowers attempt to cheer Rosie up. And yes, this is how the man responsible for An American Tail and The Land Before Time hit his nadir."
Tommy yawned. "Gnorga realizes that Stanley is still alive, so she attempts to drown him by making Gus rip off a certain 1951 musical and cry a literal sea of tears."
("What's happening?!"
"It's Gnorga! She's put a curse on you!")
"So Stanley creates a 'dream boat' out of Gus's RC boat and the trio venture into a weird surreal land of make-believe, thus triggering the film's third song, 'Welcome to my World.' Then they fall asleep while Phyllis Lindstrom's evil twin goes through Central Park and destroys it. When they wake up, Gus realizes that maybe they should go home, so he decides to head off with Rosie and the boat. Then Gnorga and Llort chase after the two kids, and they capture Rosie. Gus goes back to Stanley for help, but the latter nervously says no."
("I'd help you if I could, but I can't. She'll turn me into stone, and I don't want to be rockenized."
"You know what, Stanley? You'll never have a dream come true. And you know why?")
"Is he a coward?" asked Tommy.
("You're a coward!")
"That must be a yes," said Tommy. "Gus saves Rosie, Gnorga changes Gus into a troll, Stanley goes off to save his friends, Gus petrifies Llort's feet… all uninspired action before Rosie falls off a cliff to her apparent death, only to be saved by Stanley, who finally declares a literal thumb war against Gnorga, proving that good always triumphs over evil. Gnorga won't accept defeat, so she controls Gus to petrify Stanley. Yay. But our héros de pierre gets the last laugh when Gnorga changes into a rose bush and Gus, having proven himself brave, truthful and unselfish, becomes a real boy."
Angel applauded. "The parents come back and Gus asks them to go to the park," Tommy continued. "Gus takes Stanley and uses his green thumb on him. Nothing happens until…"
("He's gone! He's been taken up! For He's been taken up!")
"Yes, Stanley is revived," said Tommy, "and he sings 'Absolutely Green' while spreading plants back to Central Park and all around the Big Apple. Boy, was this tough! I can cite the Nostalgia Critic and Musical Hell as my sources of inspiration for this video, and I hope I never have to review another Bluth work again!"
Just then Mr. Settigren came in. "Whatcha up to, Tommy?" she asked.
"Just finished a review of A Troll in Central Park," replied Tommy. "It sucked."
"What else did Annika give you?" asked the father.
"Other bad Bluth movies," sighed Tommy, "although I guess Anastasia isn't so bad. Anyway, I'm Tommy, over and out!"
Tommy's Rating: 2.5/5
Her brief review: "Even if Thumbelina didn't 'win' at the Razzies, A Troll in Central Park should have still been nominated."
"I'm a bad troll…?"