Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

I can just imagine Charles Band screaming "That's what I like! Little things hitting each other!" This one involves a little girl going into the basement of her new apartment block and getting replaced by an evil troll who wants to replace our world with his world, which involves loads of rubbery muppet types. Only her brother seems to have an inkling of what's going on and is enlisted by an old woman (who is a witch of some kind) in getting rid of the little arsehole.Sounds good, right? I'm sorry to say it's only 'okay'. I got a kick out of the cheap creature effects and that good old eighties optical effects, but found it rather tame on the whole. It's always good to see Michael Moriarty in there but he doesn't get to do much (although his dancing is pretty funny). Sonny Bono's worth watching too.I came to this one after watching Troll 2 of course. Watch that one instead. It's insanely bad and therefore highly entertaining.

I saw this movie as I was a kid and thought it was cool. Now that I am older I still find the movie good. The characters have personality and the movie has a good storyline. The special effects are great for the time. I don't know why it has such a low rating. Okay okay I do know why but use your imagination when you watch this flick and you will not be disappointed. Ignore Troll 2. If you are a fan of fantasy movies then this one is a must. Let's not try to ignore all the character names in the movie. There are so many references to fantasy books and stories. Don't pass it up because of all the bad reviews! This is one time where I say the negative reviews are dead wrong.

Perhaps more famous now because of its 'sequel' Troll 2 (1990) - an unrelated cash-in that is frequented with the 'worst movie ever' tag - Troll continued the popular trend in the 1980's of giving a darker edge to children's movies and fantastical stories. After moving in to an apartment complex full of colourful, eccentric characters, the Potter families' daughter Wendy (Jenny Beck) is attacked in their basement by a troll, who possesses her. Soon enough, the troll is breeding many other fairytale monsters. Wendy's brother Harry (Noah Hathaway) notices her strange behaviour and alerts resident Eunice St. Clair (June Lockhart), who just so happens to be a powerful witch.The story is ludicrous and the execution is generally confused in terms of tone and target audience, but Troll does manage to muster a certain charm through its puppet design, designed by director John Carl Buechler. There is a bizarre moment at around the half way mark where the troll and his creatures burst into a macabre sing-a-long, and single-handedly manages to rescue the film from complete disaster. Add to that the intense watchability of the great Michael Moriarty, whose hangdog face and impeccable comic timing always raises a laugh, and you have a s**t film, rather than a very s**t one.It's confusing as to what it is trying to be, whether a twisted take on familiar fairytale conventions, a creepy kids film, or a horror-comedy. It manages to be all of these, but they are thrown together to create a huge mess of a film. The plot is far too incoherent to make any real sense of, and the film babbles its way to a silly, yet colourful climax. It's one of those films that would be a laugh if watched with friends and many beers, but watched alone stone cold sober, it's a drag. Possibly the only interesting fact that comes from Troll is its involvement in a legal battle with J.K. Rowling, due to similarities with the character names (Moriarty and Hathaway are name Harry Potter Sr. and Jr.) and magical aspects, but it seems a bit far-fetched to me. Worth a watch for fans of 80's puppet horror, and for a young and very beautiful Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but otherwise this is destined for bargain-bin obscurity.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Troll, one of the Band productions (that being Charles Band, who would later make such epics as the Puppet Masters), is not a good movie by any stretch, and while I can't recommend it (certainly not as ironic-much as Troll 2, which is now legendary) I enjoyed it as a friends-laugh-and-cry movie anyway. Unlike the second more notorious film, this probably isn't trying to be a good movie and failing, it's just a middling horror-comedy with a host of odd celeb (or not-yet celeb) guest star choices from Sonny Bono to Julia Louis-Dreyfus.The main story has the Potter family (yes, Harry Potter Jr and Sr, it's probably a given JK Rowling saw the film many times as a youth) moving into an apartment building where the little girl of the family goes to the basement. Always not a good idea, and here she meets a troll her captures her and disguises himself as said troll to infiltrate the family and start to make the troll universe in the apartment. This part gets a little confusing (until June Lockheart comes in and explains everything like a storybook teller for kids), but once it comes to showing all the trolls and wizardry and green forest-sections - and that WTF song sung by characters that is oddly catching - you just lose yourself in it... or not.The make-up actually is one of the things that work best for me here; it's so cheesy and slapped together, and yet some of it looks like they put effort into it, and the main troll who transforms from girl to troll and girl again looks convincing, if limited in movement (a pretty useless sub-plot and one of the big frustrations of the movie by the way, why keep screwing around with this family when making the eco-system in the apartment is the goal?) But... it's still not *good*. The guest stars all are mostly "oh just give me my check already" save for Julia Louis-Dreyfuss who does give it her all as multiple elvish-women. But Troll does work if you just watch it with a silly-open mind and don't take a shred of it seriously.