Movie Thoughts: The Gnomes: Adventures in the Snow (1997)

• Released: 1997
• Directed by: Claudio Biern Boyd
• Running time: 1h 13min
• Rating 2.5/5

Synopsis

Judge Klaus and his right-hand gnome Dany go on various winter-y adventures.

My Thoughts

Found this on Netflix and wanted to watch it because it's winter and the holidays as I'm writing this. Was in the mood for some winter-y fun for the holidays.

What I was not expecting, is that despite this being presented as a movie on Netflix, it isn't really one. Rather, this is about four-five episodes of the The Wisdom of the Gnomes TV series stitched together. There is no overall plot or through-line. It's just stuff happening with nothing to connect it other than a winter-y theme.

But I will be reviewing it as a movie because that's how it was presented to me. And as a movie, this obviously doesn't work. If they'd at least found a way to tie the stories together this might've been able to function, but as is, it's wildly disjointed.

The topography of where these gnomes and trolls are also makes no sense. They can somehow reach countries like Norway, Russia, Canada, the United States, and roughly the Nepal/Tibet area within just a few days on goose-back. So it's really hard to pinpoint where exactly the main location of Klaus' home is, since he apparently lives close to every corner of the world. 

I also don't get why Klaus gets called to Russia for an "important matter", only to be the judge of...a friendly game of hockey. Really. The show/movie isn't self-aware about how stupid and contradictory this is, either. He just gets called away from important business to be attending a hockey game, and how exactly this is important is never specified. 

So yeah, maybe this works as a show (I haven't seen the show in full), but as a movie it just doesn't work at all. The episodes are so wildly disjointed that it feels in-cohesive and just not like a movie at all.