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UPWORLD
aka
THE ADVENTURES OF A GNOME NAMED GNORM; A GNOME NAMED GNORM
Rating: ½
USA. 1991.
Director – Stan Winston, Screenplay – Pen Densham & John Watson, Story – Pen Densham, Producers – Robert W. Cort, Pen Densham, Scott Kroopf & Robert Lewis, Photography – Bojan Bazelli, Music – Richard Gibbs, Visual Effects/Animation – Perpetual Motion Pictures, Mattes – Illusion Arts, Special Effects Supervisor – Robert G. Willard, Creature Effects – Stan Winston Studios, Production Design – Marcia Hinds. Production Company – Vestron/Lightning Pictures/Interscope Communications/Trilogy Entertainment Group.
Cast:
Anthony Michael Hall (Casey Gallagher), Jerry Orbach (Captain Stan Walton), Claudia Christian (Samantha Kennedy), Mark Harelik (Derek Kaminsky), Eli Danker (Zadar), Robert Z’dar (Reggie Smalls)
Plot: Police detective Casey Gallagher is a smartass jerk who is constantly verging on suspension for his slackness and attitude problem. He is blamed when an undercover operation to buy stolen diamonds goes wrong and the dealer is blown up. Searching for evidence to clear himself, Casey finds a shimmering crystal. A strange two-foot tall humanoid creature follows him home. Capturing the creature, Casey learns that it is a gnome named Gnorm. The crystal, known as a lumen, is used by Gnorm’s people to power their underground world, but needs to be brought to the surface by a gnome warrior every ten years to be regenerated by sunlight. But then the crystal is stolen by criminals and so Casey and Gnorm must join forces to track get it back.
Upworld was the second (and final) directorial effort from Stan Winston, better known in the industry as a makeup man on famous works such as Heartbeeps (1981), Edward Scissorhands (1990) and all the Terminator, Predator and Jurassic Park films. Stan Winston’s previous directorial effort was Pumpkinhead/Vengeance: The Demon (1988), a competently directed but undistinguished supernatural horror film. Upworld sadly doesn’t even reach that level of competence.
Upworld has been conceived as a cute conceptual spin on the mid-1980s buddy cop movie that became all the fad after Lethal Weapon (1987). Shortly after Lethal Weapon came out we started getting some bizarre spins on the buddy cop concept:- cop and dog – K9 (1988) and Turner and Hooch (1988); cop and alien – The Hidden (1987) and Alien Nation (1988); cop and split personality – Loose Cannons (1989); cop and Hollywood action star – The Hard Way (1991); cop and vampire – tv’s Forever Knight (1992-6); cop and undead – Dead Heat (1988). Certainly, the idea of a cop and gnome pairing should take the prize for conceptual peculiarity.
For all that, it is a cute idea that fails to work. And this is entirely due to a completely sophomoric attitude. Which is probably no particular surprise for a film that stars Anthony Michael Hall who seems to specialize in these types of films. In the film, Hall even drives a car with the number plate ‘OYNK’ – which should probably give an idea of the film’s intellectual level. Even the gnome gets into slavering over human female breasts and butts. Hall, who appears all of about 19, is laughably miscast as a detective and is far too young to at all convince in the part. But beyond that, the film’s most fantastic aspect is not its asking us to believe in gnomes or entire societies living underground, but surely how someone with a jerkoff attitude like Anthony Michael Hall’s can remain on the police force without being suspended.
Considering the number of genre films that Stan Winston has worked on and the sterling work he has produced in the effects department on most of these, one would have thought that some of it would have rubbed off on him. At least, Winston’s team create a fairly believable gnome. However, Winston fails to light and direct it in a way that would make it look convincing. Which is a sad considering the way most makeup people complain about directors and cinematographers’ failure to show their creations in a good light.
To no particular surprise, Upworld laid about on distributor’s shelves since its completion in 1989 and was finally released to video in 1992 and shuffled around under various titles including A Gnome Named Gnorm and The Adventures of a Gnome Named Gnorm.
In other genre material, Stan Winston has also co-directed T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1991), the Universal Studios theme park ride based on Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and directed the 38 minute videoclip for Michael Jackson’s Ghosts (1997). Winston also served as producer on the cable tv series Creature Features, a series of films made using the titles of 1950s B movies – The Day the World Ended (2001), Earth vs. the Spider (2001), How to Make a Monster (2001), She Creature (2001) and Teenage Caveman (2001). In more recent years, prior to his death in 2008, Winston formed Stan Winston Productions, which produced Wrong Turn (2003) and The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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