Gnomes and Trolls: The Secret Chamber (2008)

It's not one of those top fancy slick big budget movies where you have hundreds of millions in budget. If you are looking for a movie like this, then your best bet is to search for Pixar, Dreamworks or Blue Sky films.This is a low budget production from Swedish animation studio White Shark produced almost 10 years ago, bearing this in mind, you get what you expect.The story takes you to the magical Scandinavian world where evil trolls fight against the good gnomes. Trolls like to steal and destroy, gnomes loves to help and protect animals in the forest.Deep down in the forest lives evil troll king Fassa who conspire against the good gnomes with his evil son's Face and Slim. Their objective is the find the Gnome's food stash and steal it.The mail character Junior, a young gnome at the age of 87, dreams of inventing new gadgets to improve the life of animals, while his old school father want things to stay as they are.It's a feel good story line without the flat Hollywood jokes or the perfectly formatted movie script where you have break into act two on page 14 or pivot in the story 47 minutes into the film.The rating in my review would consist of six parts.Script, how it teaches children to do good and respect their parents 8/10 Original characters and backgrounds, given the budget and year of production: 6/10 Animation of the characters, given the budget and year of production: 5/10 How did my two children (3 and 8) react to this movie: 9/10 The children's willingness to watch the movie again: 7/10 Original story, how many movies with a similar theme or story did i see before: 7/10The animations and look takes some time to adjust to (given the dominance of extremely colorful children movies), but seeing the young baby girl ask for the movie over and over again on her Ipad, improves the overall rating.And the trolls are fun to watch...

Let me first write this, the movie does not match 150 million dollar blockbusters by the giants like Disney or 20th Century Fox, instead, its a cute family movie targeting the smaller children.I have watched it several times with my two daughters, on DVD. They enjoyed it as much as I did.We have watched it several times, and although it doesn't match the mega blockbusters, its still a cute and funny movie to enjoy with your kids.It also shows Nordic mythologies, teach kids values etc.The the young kid, Junior, who is our hero, tries new ways to do things right, and we really enjoyed how he tried to put things right.Enjoy!

The story is set in Scandinavian forest. Young junior struggles to go his own path, but his father wants him to follow his path. This is small White Shark's first CG movie, and I cannot say more than "Im impressed". CG movies has been until today only produced by large studios with 100million+ budget.This movie was produced for less than three (3?) million, and it still keeps the kids stuck to the screen for 75 minutes. My two children loved it, and my younger son wanted to see it again. It's not a movie for the teenage kid, but rather for a 5-7 year old. The music is fantastic, with a great atmosphere.If i would to put any negative, then the trolls are a bit scare for the younger kids, but that is of course a troll! The facials are also not the best and it feels sometimes as it was not put too much love about the expressions. But then again, with the small budget, i can understand this.Regarding the animations, its OK, not a Kung-Fu Panda or a Bolt, but then not worse than any other mid-budget movie. I would say the animations are like Ice Age or Valiant.Its a different movie and Im excited to see what this young studio will come up with in the future. A bit slow in the beginning, but definitely picks up the pace at the end.I give it 7 out of 10.

I found this movie pretty entertaining, and I bet will become a favorite among the children. The plot is simple and the characters are fun and interesting. I especially enjoyed the trolls in this movie. They are very funny with their charming stupidity, and I think the animations of the trolls look better than those of the gnomes...The overall animations do, understandably, not match the productions of Pixar and Dreamworks, but that doesn't really bother me much. There's a warm fuzzy feeling about this movie that just can't be ignored. It exudes of joy and happiness! Definitely a good debut by Swedish producers White Shark.Go watch it with your kids, they will surely love it! 8/10