Gnome Alone (2018) - Movie Review

 

It seems like every year, I come across a stupid animated kids’ film that, for one reason or another, appeals to me where it didn’t for many others. And I proceed to look like an idiot for trying to convince grown-ass adults that it’s worth watching. 2016 had The Angry Birds Movie, last year it was The Boss Baby (I am never going to live that down, it seems), and this year, it looks like it's gonna be Sherlock Gnomes.

While I reiterate that I’m just as surprised as anyone else that that film had anything worth praising, I would also like to state that a lot of the films I cover on here are looked at through the prism of me compulsively watching anything I can get my hands on. Anything good is worth highlighting, same as anything bad, and in the wilds of cinema, know that things can always get worse. What am I getting at with all this? Well, for those who still think Sherlock Gnomes is worthy of Worst Of The Year status, know that it isn’t even the worst gnome movie from this year. Behold the true contender for that title.

For a start, do we even need to get into the triteness that is that bloody title? When you’re making Gnomeo & Juliet look subtle by comparison, it’s time to reassess your marketing. Then again, it is surprisingly apt for just how lame this thing is. Garden gnomes come to life, fight off mysterious purple blobs that eat everything using weapons of vague origin. The film spends more time painstakingly explaining why the blobs are turning up at the house of our… character that the plot centres around (she’s not our hero, and I’ll explain why in a bit) than they do explaining how they’re supposed to get rid of them. They treat the ‘ooze’ like I treat most word in the English language: I’m not entirely sure what this is exactly, but I’m pretty sure I know when to use it.

While the pseudo-home invasion shenanigans are good and boring as one would expect, the shit with the gnomes is still far easier to sit through than anything to do with the main character for the majority of this not-even-80-minute-film. Chloe is the new kid in town (take a shot) who tries to make friends at her new school with no luck (take a shot) and ends up trying to gain the favour of the resident Mean Girls.

Words cannot express how fucking irritating it is to watch Chloe being told to her face that she is needed to save the world from alien creatures, and yet she spends most of the film more excited for the upcoming dance and maybe making friends with mini-bitches. Yes, this is part of the standard "learning to be a better person" character arc, but aside from that arc being really damn tricky to get right in any movie, there is nothing here to pay off the slog that is watching our "hero" give this little of a shit about the fate of the friggin’ world. But in fairness, that does mirror the typical audience reaction to this thing. Yet another complete stinker from the studio that gave us Charming.