It’s weird when you see a crappy formulaic foreign film. Really weird. Like, this is a standard overblown pandering Hollywood CGI piece-of-crap … only it isn’t Hollywood. It gives me pause because, I mean, holy crap! Isn’t this level of calculated paint-by-numbers cattle-fodder entertainment cynicism only a natural bi-product of soulless American capitalism? No? You’re kidding, right? I find it amazing that there are other cultures that can view, say, Scooby Doo: The Movie and say, “YES! That’s what we need to do!” But here it is. Here it freaking is.
Troll is about a troll. Well, duh. The Troll is large, roughly the size of King Kong …with the congenital aggression of … King Kong … and the rough disposition of … King Kong … and the destructive capabilities of … King Kong … and the panic-stoking march to oblivion of … King Kong … and all the believability of … Donkey Kong.
Is Troll simply a cheap(er) Norwegian re-telling of King Kong? Yes. The only ways in which the films differ is the metaphor of Olav Kong is not ambiguous and he ain’t yet found the right white girl to settle down with. Maybe that will happen in Troll 2.
Ah, but there is indeed a girl for Troll. She’s paleontologist Nora Tidemann (Ine Marie Wilmann) and she doesn’t yet know the she likes her men tall, dark, and igneous. Maybe she just takes it for granite. Nora is summoned by the Norwegian big brass and even the PM when a disaster gets out of hand. You see, a mining company wanted to blow up a cave … and then more of it blew up than they expected. But instead of just 
being happy about it, they all ran away and failed to miss the mountain-sized hominid on their tail. Turns out it’s a Troll. But it’s not like a pink-haired singing Trolls or a disingenuous on-line impotent villain; this is more like a Harry Potter Troll, only much, much larger.
And it can disappear at random, which is a difficult task for a mountain-sized being. Naturally, the military is all over this threat to Olso because what’s a monster movie without expendable army guys? We really have been making the same film since Godzilla first appeared, haven’t we? Can Nora teach us the ways to accept the Troll? How about her crazy hermit father who is not-so-crazy –now, is he? Sure that isn’t a cliché we’ve seen in dozens of American films. Nor is the ineffectual government nerd, nor the “friendly” army guy who suddenly turns all business when military is “needed.” Writer/director Roar Uthaug (great name for the film), you really have made a bad American film, haven’t you? Congratulations. Seriously. This celluloid piece of shit could play in movie houses from Reno to Dayton and, when dubbed properly, none of us would be the wiser.
But it’s still a lousy film.
Clearly, Troll was “imagined” by somebody who fell asleep on the couch watching King Kong back-to-back with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It has the alarm of both of those films while having the charm of neither. I guess when you make a three-hour-film, you have time for charm. Troll, thankfully, was only 101 minutes. It doesn’t matter; I don’t see anybody falling for Troll either on- or off-screen, so perhaps the film deserves credit for being shorter than it could have been. That’s still not justification.
Here’s Troll, a mountain of a man
The last remainder of his rocky clan
That thing will prompt harry
But you know what’s really scary?
The trolls who take cues from 4Chan
Rated TV-14, 101 Minutes
Director: Roar Uthaug
Writer: Espen Auken, Roar Uthaug
Genre: Nordic Kong
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: CGI fiends
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who recognize that Hollywood shlock is no longer limited to Hollywood
