Walter Brennan, who won three Oscars in five years, stars as the lumber king who goes to the forest with his grandkids and runs into a couple of gnomes. Disney gets their money’s worth out of Wally as he also portrays the crotchety old gnome named Knobby. Three Oscars and none of them were for this film? Shoot, he should have won two for this movie alone!
This is a pretty fast paced movie, not lasting 85 minutes, so the opening scene has to quickly establish that Brennan’s D.J. Mulrooney is a big-shot business guy who has lots of money and likes chopping down trees. I was expecting this to be another one of those labor union wet dreams where the business tycoon was a bad guy, but no sooner does D.J. leave the office than he meets his the two grandkids at the airport. The plan is for them to drive up to Seattle and ride around on his new million dollar yacht.
Stopping for a picnic among the towering Redwoods, the girl (Elizabeth) wanders off and the next thing I know, I’m watching a talking racoon! Whoa, that brings back memories of college! This time, though, the racoon really is talking and so is an owl and a couple of other birds.
There’s also this little dude named Jasper. He’s a gnome and he’s pondering whether to talk to Liz about some problem he has. All the forest dwellers (demonstrating infinitely more street smarts than this country bumpkin of a gnome) advise against this, but Jasper makes himself known to Liz, who isn’t surprised at all to see a gnome in this part of the woods.
She goes back and tells D.J. and her brother what she saw and they humor her by going back to the area where Jasper was last seen. D.J. is Irish so he’s familiar with leprechauns and he doesn’t soil his Serenity Guards too badly when he finally lays his eyes on Jasper.
They follow Jasper back into some kind of tree hideout where they see Jasper’s grandfather Knobby laying in his sick bed. Gnomes are immortal, but can cease to exist when they lose the will to live. When this happens they just slowly fade away.
So what’s so awful that Knobby just can’t go on anymore? He’s depressed that there aren’t any woman gnomes around to become Jasper’s bride! Of course D.J. agrees to drive Knobby and Jasper to another forest in hopes of finding some gnome hotties.
During the ride, Knobby recounts how all the gnomes were driven away by this Mulrooney guy’s lumber business. D.J. doesn’t let on as to who he is and seems to be remorseful for screwing over these little fellows.
Stopping at a hotel, Knobby finds out who D.J. really is. D.J. tells the gnomes that he’ll take them back to the forest in the morning since they don’t like him anymore. He goes to get his car checked out and this gives the shady Horatio Quaxton the chance he needs.
Quaxton runs something called an Academy of Freaks and in one of the movie’s biggest let downs, we never get to see anyone that is enrolled in his academy.
After Quaxton steals the gnomes, D.J. calls one of his employees, Ralph Yarby and tells him to put their security team on the project of rescuing the gnomes. Yarby, being the snake in the grass that most bald-headed yes-men truly are, gets an area psychiatrist employed and has D.J. locked up.
The movie finishes up with two solid sequences: an extended car chase between D.J. and Ralph, who is trying to take him back to the funny farm, and a game of greased gnome where a bunch of women gnomes have to keep hold of a soapy Jasper for a count of seven in order to marry him. (Hey it’s a different culture, okay?)
The car chase manages to make you cringe as you see Ralph’s car suffer punishment that in the real world would leave him seriously maimed, if not completely pulped, but since he was a no good double-crosser, you’re glad to see it happen.
The bit with all the gnome-chicks trying to get their hands on Jasper probably goes on a little too long, but you see crazy stuff like Jasper coated with soap bubbles and the girls swinging on vines and beating each other up in an effort to get to Jasper.
The special effects are kind of hit and miss, with some scenes done pretty well and some showing their low-tech origins. The real problem I had was the high pitched squealing of Knobby, which only served to obscure much of what he was saying. (Though it was probably just some variation of “are you still a virgin, Jasper?”)
Walter Brennan does a good job as D.J. being the “take no crap” grandpa that busts out of sanatoriums, threatens freak show employees, and hurls witty bon mots at Ralph as he drives off from the scene of one of Ralph’s car wrecks. (“They don’t make’em like they used to, do they Ralph?”)
The movie has about as much heft as one of the gnomes, but is likewise just as nimble at giving us the “little people” entertainment the film promises. I would have liked to have seen some prankish behavior from these little freaks, but maybe I’m thinking of leprechauns.
© 2009 MonsterHunter
