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 In California's Redwood Forest, a couple of kids run into a two-foot high gnome
named Jasper. He's looking for a bride in order to make his 900-year-old
grandfather Knobby happy. The kids agree to help out Jasper, but problems
occur when an "enterprising showman...discovers the gnomes and quickly
masterminds a kidnapping plot!" 1967, 84 minutes, VHS
Years ago before they were co-opted by fat old broads lacking taste and a job,
gnomes were more than statues for college students to steal. They were wee
folk that were to be feared! They were thought to be one of the four
elementals that made up everything and were thought to live underground
spending their time doing wee folk stuff like guarding treasure, eating human
babies, and pulling all sorts of whacky mischief you would expect from
teeny tiny types. Disney, recognizing the public's love for midget-sized
hi-jinks, oversized props, and guys that talk in high-pitched squeals took it
upon themselves to adopt an Upton Sinclair book into this Gnome-Mobile thing.
Now, I remember Upton Sinclair from high school. He was the type of author
that they always talked about, but never made us read. I guess they figured
that while I would be able to get my book report on Treasure Island done by watching the movie version, they knew I'd flunk out if they assigned
me to read The Jungle and school is all about going along to get along, so we never had to read any
Sinclair. I'm also assuming that this was also because my school was a real
American school and Sinclair was one of those socialist types that started some
commune and probably hung out at commie places like Woodstock. How Upton went
from whining about meat packing plants (Can what goes on in there be any worse
than those Amish types fertilizing their crops by taking dumps in their gardens?
Hey, I'm just telling you what I heard.) to writing a children's story about
gnomes living in the Redwood forest is beyond me. If I had to guess, I'd say
this was probably supposed to be one of those tree-hugging messages that the
U.N. is always trying to push on this great country of ours. Isn't it enough
that we want to save the rainforest in places like the Amazon? Being a
developed country and all, we need to chop our forests down to make stuff like
that furniture in a box you get at Wal-Mart. It's high time that the U.N. and
their gnome lackeys grow up and join the twenty-first century. Love it or
leave it,
baby!  Being a great American company, Disney knows that we are watching this
movie to see little bitty people do funny stuff, not be lectured by some pointy
head about snoozers like "sustainable consumption". There's a little bit of
that "save the forest" junk in this movie, but it's downplayed and the big
lumber baron is portrayed as a loving grandfather who doesn't mind letting a
couple of gnomes hitch-hike in his Rolls Royce, so I think by and large, you
conservative Americans out there that believe in old time values can safely
allow your kids to watch this over and over while you're getting wasted or
something,
without too much danger of them thinking that anyone other than Chuck Heston is
their prez. 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! Playing his
grandkids are those two twerps from Mary Poppins. Never having been able sit through all six hours of that one, I was
mighty glad that Disney actually billed these two in the opening credits as
"the Mary Poppins kids" or something, because I would have been wondering who they were. Why
they didn't list Richard Deacon as "the guy who played Lumpy Rutherford's dad
on Leave It To Beaver" is beyond me though. Also along for the ride as a gnome is Ed Wynn whom we
recall mostly as Santa Clause from Miracle On 34th Street. 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 or something.
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 Mary Poppins kids at the airport, who are apparently jetting back from shooting that film
or
something. 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 don't believe her, but 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. Jasper says that he has a problem and that Liz told him that D.J.
could solve problems. Yeah, if your problem was that there was a really big
tree that needed chopping down. Anyway, 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 all depressed that there aren't any
woman gnomes around to become Jasper's bride. 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 punking these little fellows. Good thing this country wasn't
built by such mush-hearted tycoons or we'd probably all be living in tee-pees
and speaking German or something.  They have to stop at a hotel and there is an amusing bit where D.J. is claiming
that all the noise emanating from his picnic basket is a couple of trained
geese, instead of a pair of rowdy gnomes. Knobby finds out who D.J. really is
and tries to escape the picnic basket, but they get them back to the hotel room
and 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. Who is this
Quaxton character and what sort of shadiness is he up to? This is a Disney
movie -- surely you didn't think that these gnomes wouldn't be kidnapped by
some greedy slug along the way? Quaxton runs something called an Academy of
Freaks and in one of the movie's biggest let downs, we never do get see anyone
that is enrolled in his academy. After he steals the gnomes, D.J. calls one of
his employees, Ralph Yarby (Lumpy Rutherford's dad) 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 pretends to D.J. that he is some type of P.I. specializing in
cases like missing gnomes. D.J. ends up locked away in the nut-hut before
the gnomes can be rescued so the Mary Poppins kids have to rescue D.J. They do
this and D.J. and the kids then head off to Quaxton's to get the gnomes back.
Meanwhile the gnomes are making their own
escape. Knobby gets loose and heads off to a nearby forest, but poor Jasper is
left behind and has to battle Quaxton for his freedom. Somehow this all
involves a giant fishing pole and Jasper getting hooked in his pants before
D.J. busts the door down and saves Jasper. 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. I think that's a good lesson for kids. 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 floating around in a soap bubble and
the girls swinging on vines and beating each other up in an effort to get to
Jasper. He finally is "won" by the bashful gal gnome that he really likes and
D.J. tells them that he's giving them a bunch of forest to hang out in and that
if anyone wants a ride anywhere, his gnome-mobile is ready to go. Obviously,
this D.J. is a lot more fun as a grandfather than mine was. Mine never gave
any gnomes, imps, brownies, goblins, orcs, or Cardinal fans any rides when I
was with him, but he was fond of shouting "cocksucker" at passing motorists
when he deemed them too close to his lane. This movie is pretty much what you
would expect. It seems aimed squarely at the kiddies in the crowd and things
are kept moving at a fairly rapid pace (except for the ending) and D.J.'s role
in ruining the Earth isn't really ever addressed, but at least Jasper is going
to finally get laid, thus saving Knobby's life (Huh?). 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, 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 this little freaks, but maybe I'm thinking of
leprechauns or something. In the end, this is a wispy children's movie that
leaves you realizing how
your own grandpa gyped you in life.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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